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 did well to avoid that toxic mix. The public won't like politics shifting that far to the left.

Analysis from IG
The inability of any one party to gain a majority looks to be the only certainty from this election so far.

The latest leader’s debate, albeit without a representative from the Liberal Democrats or Conservatives, could quite easily have just been a three-way debate between Labour, SNP and UKIP. The subsequent client trading activity following this TV debate has seen the chance of no majority increase up to 89%, and the most likely outcome of a Labour minority government increase from 32% up to 35%.

The magic number of seats for a majority or the total for a coalition to reach is 326, and at present the Conservative party is the closest to being able to achieve this on its own with 286 seats. Labour is not too far off the pace with 273 seats, meaning that as things stand at the moment they would both require help from other parties. The Lib Dems have been trying to position themselves as the best placed party to help ‘top up’ seats, but as it is currently projected to gain 24 seats, it may not be enough.

In the debate last night Labour leader Ed Miliband once again stated the party would not look to form a coalition with the SNP, and strongly stated Labour’s desire to keep the unity of the United Kingdom. Ed Miliband knows all too well the PR disaster that would ensue if Labour were seen to limp over the threshold of No.10 with SNP support. Two other reasons why a coalition between them would be difficult is that the SNP is considerably more Left Wing than Labour, and judging by the TV appearances so far you would have to question who out of Ed Miliband and Nicola Sturgeon would be the more likely to wear the trousers.

Any formation of a minority government would be an unstable platform for a government to steer the country through the ongoing issues of maintaining the recovery, while also tackling the country’s debts. Even in power, getting motions passed through the House of Commons would be even more difficult than usually is the case, and could easily see the need for a fresh election much sooner than the normal five-year term.

===============

worth reading the whole of the above!

Sturgeon, Miliband and Clegg are more grown up, mature and sensible than the far right tory party’s present adolescent school boys and absurd Kippers, even if more than two of the latter are elected.

I think that Sturgeon and Miliband in the debates, showed themselves sincere in their values and policies, but still respected one another's differences on certain areas, namely Trident and Devolution for Scotland. The other differences are minor and the reality of government will curb their excesses.

Those differences will be shelved for a five-year period and Scottish referendum on devolution will be left until after a Scottish Parliament Election May 2016 and the SNP have renewed their mandate for such.

If needed, the Trident differences could be settled by Parliamentary Free Vote and anyway with the present rules on devolution of parliament, even a vote against the government would not lead to dissolution of parliament. If necessary, any problem could be dealt with by a following vote of confidence

However, I cannot see that the Lib/Dems, SNP, Labour, or any of the minor parties would be financially solvent enough to take on another general election and would cling together in order to build up their funding in preparation for one in 2020.

(Cameron’s brilliant dodge is backfiring.)

Again, I don’t think the Lib/Dems. would contemplate a coalition, or alliance with the tories, as the both would be too toxic for its party membership as a whole to swallow.

Especially, after the rancour built up during this May’s election process. Also, their core values are similar to Labour and SNP and minor grievances could be sensibly dealt with. The alliance has more to gain than to lose by such agreement.

Also, I will have a guess that Labour will be more receptive to changes in voting system and House of Lords and the “Alliance” will move to proportional representation and reduction in size of the House of Lords, their powers and method of selection.
-====-
Should be fun to watch.

TOSH!!!

Jim Murphy on track for heavy defeat to SNP - poll


18:12Friday 17 April 2015
6
HAVE YOUR SAY
SCOTTISH Labour leader Jim Murphy and shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander are on track for heavy defeats to the SNP at the General Election, new constituency polling has indicated.

Lord Ashcroft, the former Conservative peer, found Mr Murphy is nine points behind, while Mr Alexander is losing by 11 points.


The news was no better for the Liberal Democrats, with former leader Charles Kennedy 15 points behind in the race for Ross, Skye and Lochaber, while Jo Swinson, the Business Minister, is 11 points down in East Dunbartonshire.

The polls suggests seven SNP gains across Scotland, with the Tories one point ahead in Berwickshire, Roxborough and Selkirk - which was held by Liberal Democrat Sir Alan Beith.

Lord Ashcroft’s polling also indicated the SNP would gain Glasgow South West from Labour, take North East Fife from the Liberal Democrats and seize Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale from the Tories.

Each constituency poll featured 1,000 voters with surveys completed between April 11 and yesterday.

“There is no gloss that can be put on these polls. They are bad for Scottish Labour and if they are repeated on election day the SNP will have more MPs and David Cameron will walk back into Downing Street”
Scottish Labour spokesman


Lord Ashcroft said: “I wanted to know whether the SNP surge had subsided in places I had previously surveyed; whether it threatened other incumbents, especially Lib Dems; and whether there were any potential surprises in store.

“The answers are no, yes and yes. In the three Labour seats the SNP are further ahead than when I polled them earlier in the year.”


SNP General Election campaign director Angus Robertson said his party was “taking nothing for granted”.

He said: “These constituency polls are very welcome, indicating SNP support continuing to grow across Scotland - encompassing areas which voted No as well as areas which voted Yes. If people place their trust in the SNP on 7 May, our pledge is to be a strong voice at Westminster for the whole of Scotland.

“The polls suggest that our policy to deliver jobs, growth and investment in services in place of Westminster cuts has huge appeal.

“While these polls are encouraging, we will keep working hard to ensure that Scotland’s voice is heard at Westminster with a strong team of SNP MPs.”


A Scottish Labour spokesman said: “There is no gloss that can be put on these polls. They are bad for Scottish Labour and if they are repeated on election day two things will happen - the SNP will have more MPs and David Cameron will walk back into Downing Street again.

“A vote for anyone other than Labour means the Tories will be the largest party across the UK. That would be a disaster for Scotland.

“Only a Labour Government can give working class families in Scotland a fairer shot in life, with our plans to ban exploitative zero hours contracts, increase the minimum wage to at least £8 an hour and work for a living wage.

“Labour is the only anti-austerity party in Scotland. The Tories will impose another five years of their failed austerity, and the SNP’s plan to cut Scotland off from UK-wide taxes would mean extra cuts of £7.6 billion. The only way to get a Labour Government is to vote Labour.”



comments

The fact of the matter is it will be Labour or Conservative in power!

I am voting Conservative but could opt for Labour if it turns out my vote could help keep the SNP out.

That is my main goal, to prevent the SNP getting any say in parliament!

They have had seven years in Scotland and had a majority and how have they used this majority?

To keep incompetent SNP in post!

We do not need the SNP to help us as they are like rising damp, they seep and destroy but so slowly you don't even know it is happening until it is too late!

Vote Conservative or Labour and which ever you choose you vote will count!



I am sorry for the rank and file Labourites. Not Murphy and Curran and co because they have demonstrated that they are self serving and careerist but the honest people of the Labour movement who genuinely want to help their fellow man. I hope that they can reclaIm their party and they will be able reclaim their place in Scottish politics.



that would be the end of dim jim claiming for cans of irnbru on his commons expenses a bill the taxpayer picks up, and wee dougie will never again have to pay back expenses he has over claimed and was not entitled to.



Folly, utter folly. The only good news is that it can be put right but only after suffering 5 more years of a Conservative Government and after up to £40B of budget shortfall in Scotland depending on when the SNP achieve their goal of FFA.

a good observation from FT ....

Labour and the Tories are stuck with the reputations they have, and the last three weeks of the campaign will reveal which is the least repellent

============

sign of the times and slipping grammatical standards
as there are only two options mentioned, it should of course be "less" and not "least"

Ukip says BBC 'exposed' over left-wing debate audience
Figures released by BBC show that only 58 members of the audience were Conservative or Ukip supporters compared with about 102 who supported left-leaning parties


By Emily Gosden, Steven Swinford and Christopher Hope7:00PM BST 17 Apr 2015
Nigel Farage has claimed the BBC has been “exposed” after it was forced to admit that nearly twice as many members of the studio audience for the Challengers’ Debate were "left-wing" as were Conservative or Ukip supporters.
The Ukip leader was booed during Thursday night’s debate after claiming it was a “remarkable audience even by the left-wing standards of the BBC”.
He added on Friday that it was "completely obvious that we did not have an audience reflective of public opinion" and insisted: "I didn't lose my rag."
The BBC initially refused to disclose the political make-up of the audience but eventually released figures on Friday afternoon.
They showed that, of the 200-strong audience, about 58 were Conservative or Ukip supporters while about 102 supported left-leaning parties - Labour, the Lib Dems, SNP, Plaid Cymru or the SNP – and the rest were undecided.


Mr Farage said: "If you were to put Ukip and the Conservatives on the centre-right in current opinion polls, we are on about 49 per cent between us. If the audience make-up didn't reflect that then it's wrong.”
He added: “There was a whole feel to the thing that frankly it wasn't as it was intended to be. It just exposes them [the BBC] and firms up the views of people watching it. I would say it's nul points for the BBC."
Jeremy Hunt, the Conservative health secretary, also questioned the audience make-up, saying: “The need to do something about immigration is something where Nigel Farage was more in touch with the British public than perhaps the studio audience were.”
The BBC said that all broadcasters and political parties involved in this year’s live TV debates had agreed for an independent polling organisation to select the audience. The BBC used ICM and “set out clear objectives to ensure there [was] a broad range of political preferences”.


A spokesman said: “We asked the polling company to work to proportions which take account of a number of factors in recruiting the audience – in other words, recent polling figures are only part of the equation. We also look at past electoral support, as well as the different party political make-up in different parts of the UK.”
About 20 per cent of the audience were undecided. Of those who were decided there were five Conservative voters for every five Labour, four Lib Dem, three Ukip, two SNP, two Green and one Plaid Cymru voter, the BBC said.
An ITV spokesman said the audience for its seven-way debate reflected the same proportions.
James Harding, head of news and current affairs at the BBC, said that the booing of Nigel Farage reflected the audience getting “really engaged”.


Thursday night's debate averaged 4.27 million viewers between 8pm and 9.30pm, according to data from Attentional - down from the 7 million that watched the seven-way leaders debate on ITV.

.

Jim Murphy and Douglas Alexander 'to lose their seats'
New polling by Lord Ashcroft shows the Scottish Labour leader and the party's Uk election chief are on course to lose their seats in an SNP landslide.

Jim Murphy and Douglas Alexander are to lose their seats to the SNP in the general election, according to an astonishing new opinion poll that lays bare the devastating scale of the rout facing Labour in Scotland.

The detailed constituency surveys by Lord Ashcroft show that Mr Murphy, the Scottish Labour leader, and Mr Alexander, the party’s UK election campaign coordinator, are both on course for defeat after the Nationalists extended their already huge lead.

Labour last night said that “no gloss” could be put on the poll and claimed that if the findings become reality then “David Cameron will walk back into Downing Street again.”

David Mundell, the only Conservative MP in Scotland, is now also narrowly trailing the SNP, although the Tories could avoid another wipeout north of the Border by winning a neighbouring seat.

The SNP is also on course to take a series of Liberal Democrat seats, with even Charles Kennedy, their popular former leader, falling 15 points behind the Nationalists in his Highlands constituency.

But the polling, unveiled less than three weeks until the election, made the grimmest reading for Labour and overshadowed Mr Murphy unveiling his party’s Scottish manifesto.

It is expected to prompt further claims that the only way Ed Miliband can enter Downing Street is with the help of the SNP. The Labour leader has rejected a coalition but refused four times on Friday to rule out a less formal confidence-and-supply or vote-by-vote arrangement.

The survey of eight constituencies, five of which Lord Ashcroft has polled before, showed massive swings of support to the SNP since the 2010 general election.

The Nationalists have surged from the fourth place they achieved in East Renfrewshire at the last election to first thanks to a huge 26.5 per cent swing away from Labour. The well-off area was once the Conservatives’ safest seat in Scotland.

Mr Murphy was one point ahead when the former Tory party treasurer polled the seat in February, but this has since turned into a nine-point advantage for the SNP despite his high-profile role in the campaign.

But Lord Ashcroft said the Scottish Labour leader could be saved by Tory supporters, who forma quarter of the electorate in the constituency, voting tactically for him to keep out the SNP.

Conservative voters in the seat said they were less likely to say they would rule out voting Labour (64 per cent) than would rule out the SNP (87 per cent).

The survey found the SNP has extended its lead from eight to eleven points in the Paisley and Renfrewshire South being defended by Mr Alexander, the Shadow Foreign Secretary.

Mr Mundell was in a dead heat with the SNP in his Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale seat when the seat was polled two months ago but the updated survey said the Nationalists had pulled two points ahead.

Lord Ashcroft said this was “well within the margin of error and therefore too close to call.”

The Conservatives are on course to win by a whisker their key target seat of Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk, where they are trying to oust Michael Moore, the former Liberal Democrat Scottish Secretary.

The poll put support for the Tories on 30 per cent, with the SNP on 29 per cent and the Lib Dems 28 per cent in a three-way fight.

Lord Ashcroft suggested tactical voting by Labour supporters could decide the result and noted they were more likely to back the Lib Dems than the Tories. However, he questioned how many would actually do so.

In another blow to the Lib Dems, the poll said the SNP is now 15 points ahead in Mr Kennedy’s seat of Ross, Skye and Lochaber, up from five points in February.

The SNP is also leading by 11 points in Jo Swinson’s East Dunbartonshire constituency and by 13 points in North East Fife, where Sir Menzies Campbell, another former Lib Dem leader, is stepping down after 28 years.

Lord Ashcroft also found that the Nationalists had extended their lead from three to 21 points in Glasgow South West, where the incumbent is Labour's Ian Davidson.

Each constituency poll featured 1,000 voters with surveys completed between April 11 and yesterday. They invited respondents to consider the specific candidates standing in their areas but did not name them.

A Scottish Labour spokesman said: “There is no gloss that can be put on these polls. They are bad for Scottish Labour and if they are repeated on election day two things will happen – the SNP will have more MPs and David Cameron will walk back into Downing Street again.”

Angus Robertson, the SNP’s general election coordinator, welcomed the results but insisted his party was not taking victory for granted.

He said: “With more anti-Tory MPs than Tory MPs at the election, we can lock David Cameron out of Downing Street. Electing a strong team of SNP MPs ensures that Scotland has real power at Westminster to make Scotland’s voice heard – and help deliver progressive politics across the UK.”

A Scottish Tory spokesman said: “These polls show once again that the Labour and Lib Dem vote is plummeting right across Scotland. The question for voters now is why join a sinking ship?

A Scottish Liberal Democrat spokesman said: "These polls don't mention the name of the incumbent candidate and all the research shows that when they do support will jump through the roof.”

Another Burnley boy in the news:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cricket/32257895

The most terrifying thing about Nicola Sturgeon is that she may be - sort of - right

Opportunity is faltering in this country, and the Conservatives must find a better answer than the 'progressives' now circling around Ed Miliband




From left, Labour Party leader Ed Miliband shakes hands with Plaid Cymru Party leader Leanne Wood, Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon, Green Party leader Natalie Bennett, as UKIP leader Nigel Farage stands at his lectern after a British election debate broadcast on television at Central Hall Westminster, London, Thursday, April 16, 2015 Photo: Stefan Rousseau/Pool





Charles Moore
By Charles Moore

7:10PM BST 17 Apr 2015

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11546046/The-most-terrifying-thing-about-Nicola-Sturgeon-is-that-she-may-be-sort-of-right.html



A reverse takeover (RTO) is when a smaller company takes over a bigger one. It is defined as “a type of merger used by private companies to become publicly traded without resorting to an initial public offering (IPO)”. This is what the SNP is trying to do to the Labour Party.


On Thursday night’s television debate, Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader, made this clear. Under her RTO, the bigger company will be taken over immediately after the general election. Then – without an IPO, i.e. the opportunity for non-Scottish voters to have a say – she will have the whip-hand in the Government not just of Scotland, but of the whole of the United Kingdom.


One must gasp with admiration at the way she does it. To pursue the business analogy, she makes Ed Miliband look like the complacent chief executive who won’t quite tackle the competition (by agreeing to “lock David Cameron out of government”) and hasn’t got the vision to revive the brand.


Ms Sturgeon’s brand is “progressive change”, which is a 21st-century way of saying “socialism”. Even before the merger is effected, it is selling well. In the TV debate, the Greens and the Welsh Nationalists were with her on this. Mr Miliband tried to be too, at least as much as is consistent with wearing a dark suit and trying to look like a statesman. So is progressive Nick Clegg, who didn’t show up. If you asked the also-absent Mr Cameron, I expect he would tell you how much he likes progressive change too.


Which leaves only Nigel Farage pointing out rather crossly that all this progress is not so marvellous if taxpayers – already burdened with debt – have to pay out yet more, if business is squeezed and scorned, and if foreigners have an automatic right to the benefits.

Mr Farage was right to complain that the live audience in Methodist Central Hall was a BBC self-parody of Left-wing bias, as was the panel. But what struck me about the debate was not how unlike the ones which include the Tories and the Liberals it was, but how similar.

The mood of all these meetings is that “austerity” is bad, that there is a prevailing unfairness holding the people back which the conventional party leaders won’t address. So when Ms Sturgeon calls for boldness, her words find an echo not just in Glasgow, but from Land’s End to John O’Groats. She has become a major player in the nation she wishes to break asunder. If she pulls off her RTO, I recommend she chuck in all this stuff about Scottish independence, get a Westminster seat, and become Progressive Labour Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. She is not weighed down by that New Labour/Old Labour burden, all that Milibaggage.

If, like me, you dislike the word “progressive” and don’t believe in ever-higher taxes, you may not be enjoying the campaign very much. If you do not understand why the manifesto of the Conservative Party should boast, Soviet-style, “We have a plan for every stage of your life”, you may wonder if there is anyone left who believes in a free society. If you are dismayed by the lack of attention in this campaign to how prosperity is created, you may feel cut out of the national conversation.

But one must calm down and consider soberly a horrifying possibility – that Nicola Sturgeon may be, sort of, right.


There is something dreadfully inadequate about “austerity” (although if people think they have experienced the real thing here, they should go and live in Greece or Spain). There is something awry with a society in which wages are only now rising in real terms after seven years of stagnation. There is something rotten about the chief executive of a high street bank (HSBC) being a “non-dom” in the country where he was born and in which he works. And who could blame young people, unable to get their feet on the housing ladder, if they grabbed any actual ladders lying to hand, climbed into all those empty London properties owned by absentee Russians, and squatted there?

None of the ruling parties in the age of the credit crunch has answered the problems the crisis created. Labour, which presided over the bust and had the most collusive relationship with big banks of any government in our history, bears the heaviest blame. But the Conservatives endorsed the spending policies of the Gordon Brown era and so addressed the crisis too late. The voters sensed this and, for that reason, neither party could win the last election.

In 2015, the voters sense a similar thing, with the difference that Nick Clegg no longer seems like anybody’s answer. Neither Tories nor Labour can quite say why they want to be in charge. The Conservative-led Coalition has made strong progress recently, shown again in yesterday’s job totals, but probably too late. A similar air emanates from all three main parties – one of evasion, embarrassment, even fear.

Therefore the marginal entrants attract the attention. Even if the SNP wins every single seat in Scotland on May 7, the party will still have only a fifth of the votes of Labour or Tory, nationwide. But it will have authority, and the big boys won’t.

So Ms Sturgeon is right that the economic system is not still working properly and the political system likewise. Where are she and all the other lovers of “progressive change” wrong?


Obviously they are wrong to ignore or despise markets, business and how money makes the world go round. But one should not frame this argument in the usual cliché that socialists have heart and capitalists have head. Their key, mistaken, almost unchallenged assumption is that the problem of nowadays is inequality.

Once you make economic inequality the chief measure of social ill, you always end up with socialism as your remedy. You think each economic difference is automatically wrong, so the easy remedy is to take from the better-off. This is an incentive to make people poorer because, so long as they are all poor, you feel you have achieved something. Making people poor is one of the few things that governments are really good at. Such equality is a social evil.

Surely the key wrong of the credit crunch era is not inequality, but the lack of opportunity. It does not harm the young person earning £25,000 a year if someone else earns £500,000. Indeed, if we all got £25,000, he would have fewer life-chances and much less to motivate him. But if there is a special caste of people who earn £500,000 from which he is forever excluded, then he has no chance.

Opportunity is not growing in modern Britain. It costs about three times more to buy your first house, in real terms, than it did 30 years ago, and it takes longer to find one. It is harder to get well-educated if your parents cannot afford to pay for it (though Michael Gove improved this situation before being punished for his courage and moved on). My generation was the first of which a sizeable percentage owned shares. Now we look as if we shall be the last. We had serious incentives to save, and our personal pensions were the envy of continental Europe. For the young and middle-aged today, saving makes no sense and the private pension has become like a tree from which successive chancellors have stripped almost all the fruit.

The Tories are talking, rightly, of security. But security is earned by opportunity taken, and opportunity is stuttering. If they do not win this election, it will be because, no longer knowing what they believe, they are tongue-tied when confronted by the language of “progressive change”.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-32352674

Ed Milliband turned up and look what happened to him , the green oz women was all pie in the sky policy's, SNP wants to form a Labour/SNP government but at the same time wants to leave the UK, go and don't stick your nose into the English Parliament. They all turned on UKIP over Farage saying there should be a end to free NHS treatment for people who turn up from all over the World, and we often hear of foreigners having treatment over here and going home without paying

we often hear of foreigners having treatment over here and going home without paying

i have no idea of the quantum of this problem, but per earlier posts on this subject, except in the case of genuine "acute emergency", i fail to see why payment cannot be enforced at the door
this is standard procedure for any private clinic, whether for blood tests or surgical procedure
certainly, collecting after the event quickly becomes very time-consuming and thus expensive as any credit controller will tell you

cyners - 18 Apr 2015 10:30 - 58779 of 58779
"we often hear of foreigners having treatment over here and going home without paying" in the Daily Mail.

"i have no idea of the quantum of this problem"

It's a major problem to Daily Mail readers and bigoted UKIP voters. But, to normal, sane-minded folks, the numbers involved are negligible.

do you know the amount of money involved, or are you just speculating?

linked to that, do you have any objection to the concept that immigrants should need to have contributed to the system or to have lived and worked here for a certain amount of time before they qualify for welfare benefits?

Post 58780

Allah will be pleased. I am worried that I agree with Hil.
=-=-=-===-=

Max,

I would think the posters were probably put up by members of the lunatic fringe of UKIP!

My son did tell me the amount involved, Cyners - I can't recall how much it was because life's too short to worry about trivia like that, but it's not a great deal in the grand scheme of things.

In answer to your second question, it's not something I'm bothered about. But it does depend upon whether you're talking about EU or non-EU immigrants. If you wanted to limit or deny EU immigrants from receiving benefits or healthcare, you'd require a law change to make the same rules apply to UK nationals too.

"not a great deal in the grand scheme of things" can be an awfully large amount :-)

Pop over to la belle france hilly, trot down to the benefits office...see how far you get.