No2AV’s referendum broadcast quotes Alan B’Stard – “We just say we’re going to make these changes – then, when we get voted in, we’ll just blame the other lot, saying they stopped us doing it because it’s all in the national interest.”

Can somebody please tell me how this is different from the shite I’ve been hearing from successive governments for the last five decades?

Might as well vote “YES” if the wankers are going to do it under AV as well.

It’s not often we have a referendum for the whole of the UK, so when the political classes condescend to ask our opinion (rather than telling us what we should believe) it’s only polite to answer.

First and foremost I will nail my colours to the mast. I’m a democrat – with a small D, and not in the American sense. I believe in representative government elected by the people. However, I also live in one of the safest Tory seats in the country, so what I believe and how I vote makes absolutely no difference at all. I might as well have wiped my bum on my ballot paper last May for all the good it did.

Our present voting system produces distorted results and, with the possible exception of the odd landslide, gives us minority government. It was fine in the days when there were only the Whigs and the Tories up on the hustings singing their siren songs to those who actually had the vote, but in a modern environment with all its different shades of opinion it just doesn’t work.

Much scare-mongering about the BNP has been done by the “No” campaign. Continue reading Yes or No? (No. 1) →

‘Tis the morning after the night before and the meejuh are busy picking over the chicken carcass and feeding us all the wrong bits.

Inevitably, because they feel that they have constantly to produce “sensational news”, our horribly dumbed down media are tending to concentrate on the fact that a few hundred protestors went a bit too far – albeit nothing on the scale of the Great Poll Tax Riot. (Two hundred-odd arrests on a day when two hundred thousand-plus had gathered is damned good going on anyone’s analysis!)

There are several points to arise out of the media coverage. Firstly, it serves to obscure a proper view of the feelings being expressed. The overwhelming majority of yesterday’s protestors were peaceful, law-abiding people who wanted to make the, very valid, point that they object to what HMG are up to. There IS an alternative to the Tory scorched earth policy and they were saying so loud and clear. If we hadn’t been in our current state of penury we’d have been there to say it as well.

Sadly, the (limited) violence lets the government shibboleth-robots off the hook. Secretly, they hope and pray that things will turn nasty. It allows them to go into orgasmic paroxysms of pompous condemnation and mock outrage, coupled with a huge dollop of humbug about understanding people’s concern. Continue reading Messages from March’s March →

More news to emerge from the LibDems’ Spring Shindig behind the Ring of Steel in Sheffield. Little Cleggie has vowed not to let the “profit motive drive a coach and horses through the NHS“. (Full story here.)

It usually takes some time in power for a political party to destroy its reputation. Years of shattered dreams, failed ideas and broken promises – followed by a slow decline in the polls and, eventually, a decade or so in the wilderness to lick the wounds, elect a new leader or two and embark on the long, slow trudge back to power.

Cleggie has managed the first half of that process in a little over ten months!

The broken promise over tuition fees has been devastatingly destructive for the Liberal Democrats, and Cleggie’s parliamentary chums must take full responsibility for the damage it has done to the party’s credibility. Trailing in sixth in the Barnsley bye-election, behind the BNP and a local trainspotter, is a pretty good barometer of how people feel about such early treachery.

So – what price for this latest promise? Not much on current performance, when fundamental commitments are so easily abandoned in the name of economic expediency.

We will just have to wait and see whether the lad has a sufficiently big pair to stand up to the Boy David on this one. If he doesn’t the next Liberal Democrat conference can return to the seaside, because all they will need is a beach hut.

Dear Jane

Congratulations on getting on to the BBC web site this evening. (Click here.)

Commiserations for having to face the flack.

There’s just a little something I’d like to take issue with:-

“The Liberal Democrats seem to be bearing the brunt of the complaints people are making. Some of that is to do with the media coverage we are getting. They are specifically targeting the things that Liberal Democrats have said during the election.”

The Liberal Democrats are “bearing the brunt” for a very good reason.

I was a loyal activist and supporter of the Liberal Democrats for many a long year and, until recently, have always voted that way. I believed that they meant what they said and would do what they promised. I believed quite passionately in their apparent commitment to education, the single most important thing we can do to secure our future.

The abasement of the disreputable U-turn on tuition fees left me gobsmacked and, frankly, feeling utterly betrayed. For Vince Cable to then go on national TV and slither around in such an odious manner just rubbed salt into the wounds.

For years I/we sold the party as different and principled – yet, no sooner than a few bums end up on the back seat of a few Ministerial Rovers, principles get sacrificed for the trappings of power and slain on the altar of a referendum on AV. A cheap price given that the Liberal Democrats have now revealed themselves as just as two-faced as the two parties they so long sought to unseat.

There is an old proverb “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

Jane, it is more in sorrow than in anger that I have to tell you that your party, at the first major national test of your convictions, has been found wanting and cannot be trusted. That, and that alone, is more than enough justification for you to be flayed alive by the media.

Trust is easily lost and hard to re-forge. It will be a long, long time before I vote Liberal Democrat again.

Regards

Whoops – there goes another one …

Hot on the heels of one out of touch Tory peer putting his foot where his foie gras should go, the soon to be enobled Howard Flight has given an interesting insight into modern conservative party thinking. (Isn’t that an oxymoron? Come to think of it, it’s a DOUBLE oxymoron. Yay!)

Political followers may remember that Flighty used to be the member for Arundel and South Downs – one of the safest of safe seats, with extra safety bars added. You’d think that this would have been a gold season ticket on the gravy train until the time comes to retire and spend more time with your company directorships.

Not so for Flighty following another boot/denture collision – this time blowing the gaff on the Tories REAL agenda if they had won the 2005 general election. Understandably, the then Tory leader, the vampire they call Howard, wasn’t too chipper about this and barred him from standing – even going so far as to threaten the local Tory branch with suspension unless they deselected him.

Flighty has resurfaced as one of the boy David’s new placemen in the Lords. No sooner than he thinks his rehabilitation period is spent than he offers this gem to the Evening Standard “We’re going to have a system where the middle classes are discouraged from breeding because it’s jolly expensive. But for those on benefits, there is every incentive. Well, that’s not very sensible.”

Oh, what joy as another Tory toff spontaneously immolates himself. Do they not any longer teach at candidate school that there are some things you just don’t say? Apparently not.

The more serious point is that, YET AGAIN, we must call the boy David’s judgement into serious doubt for appointing these gobshites.

“Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they’ve told you what you think it is you want to hear.” Alan Coren

I freely admit that, for many years, I was an active supporter of the Liberal Democrats. I agreed with a lot of what they stood for – particularly and especially their apparent commitment to education.

I quote directly from the LibDems 2010 election manifesto “We will scrap unfair university tuition fees so everyone has the chance to get a degree, regardless of their parents’ income.” (Their emphasis, not mine!)

Probably it’s naïve of me, but I did harbour a lingering hope that here was a party which, once in power, would actually put its actions where its policies were.

Earlier this week Vince Cable claimed that the LibDems had not broken any promises because what was binding on them was the coalition agreement and not the manifesto on which they fought the election or the pledge on tuition fees that a great many of them had signed. The BBC interview with Jon Sopel was a nauseating example of obfuscation and distraction. Time and again he was asked if he’d broken the manifesto promise. Time and again he slithered away. What is a manifesto, but the promises made to the electorate? Grow some balls, Vince!

To add insult to injury – as he presides over the trebling of university tuition fees and, presumably, votes in full support of the chinless Gove’s butchering of school rebuilding projects – we are set to enjoy Cable’s ballroom prowess on Strictly Come Dancing.

Is this the modern equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns? Watch out, Vince – Nero died a friendless suicide!

“Peers shall teem in Christendom, and a Duke’s exalted station be attainable by competitive examination!” Act 1, Iolanthe, WS Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan.

If only …

Stuffing the House of Lords with your cronies, the corrupt and the crud rejected by the electorate is as old as Parliament itself. Hell, I’m sufficiently advanced in years to remember the furore when Harold Wilson ennobled Joe Kagan, the man who gave us Gannex raincoats and a new byword for “false accounting”.

Yesterday was just another milestone in this long and dishonourable tradition. Fifty four new peers will shortly strut their funky stuff on the red leather benches with a dead stoat round their necks. Notable here is that, of the new residents of the best appointed retirement home in the country, forty two are coalition, only eleven are from the opposition and one is a crossbencher.

More striking than this is that BBC research has revealed that donors being given Conservative peerages have donated a total of £4,678,636 to the party between them. As far as the boy David is concerned it seems that an honour is not without profit.

Nick Clegg, who must have had at least some say in the list (presumably in between making the tea and emptying the bins), has been banging the drum for years about reforming the House of Lords. But he’s quite happy to have another fifteen on the public payroll, including one whose only claim to fame seems to be having achieved the rank of deputy group leader on Luton Borough Council. Earth shattering stuff!

The real reason behind all these new appointments is the usual attempt to fiddle the balance of power in the chamber to make life easier for the majority in the lower house. The House of Lords is an anachronism and it is long overdue for the simple reform of making it fully elected. Don’t hold your breath while you wait, though!

I was going to lay into Baron Young of Graffham with a vengeance, but at least he has done the moderately decent thing and slung his hook.

Never had it so good? Supermac, you aint, Dave, and you are WAY out of touch.

Some of us have never had it so bad – partner out of work, 76 people going for each vacancy, own job under threat, mortgage to pay, taxes about to rise and the square root of bog all help from the state? Never had it so damned bad, Dave.

Young is, however, just a product of his own party – out of touch with reality because they all come from the same privileged background where the right school tie opens doors. He is a disgrace.

More to the point is that you should judge the prime minister on the people he appoints to advise him. The boy David dumped the old David once his views became public, but I suspect that that was just a political knee-jerk once he saw how the proles were reacting. Every day that goes by shows more and more why you should NEVER EVER trust a Tory.

Iain Duncan-Smith.

Need I say more?

Well, I’m bloody well going to.

I know that Norman Tebbit is (technically) still alive, but it looks ever increasingly like IDS not only inherited the constituency of Chingford but His Lordship’s four working brain cells. At least the millionaire IDS moves slightly with the times and knows that the unemployed can’t now afford to save for a bike and have to catch the bus.

Today’s raft of announcements left me spitting cornflakes at the telly. One wonders whether Duncan-Slaphead actually lives in this country.

It’s all very well to say “three strikes and you’re out” and stigmatise the jobless in the way that the Tory party traditionally does. But answer me a simple question, Dunc – where are the bloody jobs? I saw him on breakfast news this morning – asked that very question, and he very quickly and obviously changed the subject. He did, at least, claim that Jobcentre had handled 450,000 vacancies (mostly of the burger-flipper variety), but that is small comfort to the 3,000,000 plus currently out of work or “economically inactive”. (During the six months that my other half was out of work and claiming jobseekers allowance Jobcentre was about as much use as a hand-knitted condom.) And you don’t make the figures look any better by sacking half a million civil and public servants.

On top of that we have the idea of giving the long term unemployed four weeks of manual labour, litter picking and the like – another bloody scheme to give the impression of doing something while actually achieving the square root of smeg-all – rather like the YTS, another failed Tory employment policy. If there’s work that needs to be done then create some real jobs.

The sad fact is that we’ve heard all IDS’s claptrap before.

I knew this lot were going to be bad, but cheeses, this is depressing.