Politics

[Gullscorer]

Personally, I don't believe you, and finally other posters have started to get bored of your ramblings I think

I may be wrong (I hope I am) but, based on what I've read of the vast majority of your own posts to date, I've started to believe you're a humourless and boringly obnoxious boor. Makes me feel a certain disdainful compassion for you..

[cambgull]

Farage is back...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-32696505

[Orange Gull]

Farage is back...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-32696505

Can't say I'm surprised, they need him as much as he needs them. This just goes to highlight the fact that Ukip is indeed a one band, despite the denials from Farage. Moreover, it makes him look like the very kind politicians he claims to despise, those who make false promises and go back on deals.

I don't believe for a second that if he really wanted to leave then the party executive would have forced him to remain.

[Gullscorer]

There's no doubt that Farage is currently UKIP's biggest asset, and the media understandably focuses on him, which makes it appear that UKIP is a one man band, but in fact there are a number of other very able people in the party.

He did not make a false promise to resign - he did actually tender his resignation, but the executive committee persuaded him (there's no way they could have forced him) to stay on as leader. He was willing, anyway, to stand for election again as leader in the autumn if the party wanted him back. He is, after all, their biggest asset!

Making false promises didn't stop David Cameron from returning as Prime Minister, but when the general public see Cameron's EU referendum promise for what it is: a ruse to keep Britain in the EU (he will return from negotiations claiming he has achieved the best possible deal and that we should stay in the EU), they will be turning to UKIP in even greater numbers.

[Alpine Joe]

Orange Gull

I don't believe for a second that if he really wanted to leave then the party executive would have forced him to remain.

I'm sure Orange Gull is quite right on this, and equally, as the elected Party Leader, the Executive would have had a hard job dislodging him against his will had they wanted to, given his overwhelming popularity among ordinary Party members.

When Farage stated that he intended resigning from the Leadership if he failed to gain the Thanet seat, I think UKIP were genuinely believing that they could get, seven, eight, maybe even a dozen MP's at this Election. If Farage was not to be one of them, then to remain as Party leader would have given UKIP an odd situation. Just imagine if Vince Cable had been Liberal Party leader rather than Clegg. Would it not have been right for him, having failed in his bid to get elected, to resign the leadership so that the Party could then select someone as Party leader who couple lead their group of 8 or 9 Liberal MP's in Parliament ?

With one solitary MP, the practical point behind Farage's resignation never materialised. Carswell has got the UKIP Westminster office to himself. UKIP remain a well supported political force, but one that is almost totally devoid of representation in Parliament.

Farage has done as he said he would, and tendered his letter of resignation. As he's the most able and effective communicator they have, and far and away their major asset, I can understand the reluctance of UKIP members and voters to see him go. Also unlike the situation with Red Ed where they're queuing up to jump into his shoes, I don't think anyone was coming forward within UKIP to suggest they could do a better job than Farage.

Meanwhile, all the Romanians, boat people, and asylum seekers, who'll be flooding in over the next 5 years should all be sent directly to Thanet South and kept there, in order to punish the electorate of that area for not electing Nige

[PhilGull]

Farage had to stay, the only other viable candidate was the deputy leader and he's a Scouser. They could never put him in charge as they would lose all of the votes south of the Watford gap.
I'm actually sorry to see Milliband go, I was really impressed with him personally in all the pre-election guff - it was just the Tory-lite policies of Labour that stopped me voting for them. I really hope they don't move further to the right as some of their old-guard are suggesting they should. They're already to far right wing but never enough to compete with the Tories, they'll end up being in opposition for generations. They need to take the opportunity to take a new progressive direction. Look towards the Greens, SNP, PC and yes, even UKIP for policy ideas - I actually beleive that some of UKIPs more liberal policies could find a home in the Labour party.
I am not a Labour asupporter by any means but we need a strong viable opposition to compete with the Tories, at least until we get some form of PR...

[Gullscorer]

Time to disband the BBC? http://conservativewoman.co.uk/david-ke ... sh-it-off/

[PhilGull]

Time to disband the BBC? http://conservativewoman.co.uk/david-ke ... sh-it-off/

The funny thing is, as someone who considers themselves to be 'left-wing' I think the BBC has demonstrated too much right-wing bias. This was especially the case during the recent election coverage where they seemed to give far too much air time to UKIP as opposed to the Greens and where they seemed to give the Conservatives a much easier ride than Labour.

[EmetEdadsBeard]

Enjoy the election, Emet?

I voted and went to Dublin in the early hours of Friday morning for the Ireland v England one dayer, found out in the pub that the Tories had won outright and felt like staying there! So no mate, didn't enjoy it.
Milliband obviously wasn't popular enough with the electorate, but I think I've said this before, every buffoon in the labour party is trumped by Gove and moreso Boris Johnson ffs!!!

We get the Government we deserve and it shows what a foookwit the average bloke must be to give this lot another go. Bye bye NHS, bye bye real jobs with real wages, hello more and more zero hours contracts, cutbacks, volunteering (like shutting down libraries but telling the now jobless librarians they can keep them open without being paid for the privilege!) hello to gerrymandering (the first thing this vile bunch are pushing is boundary changes that will mean they will always win more seats than labour, how can that be morally allowed let alone legal, t**ts!!!) but their most important and pressing policy, which the whole country relies on massively and without it we've been going down the pan is repealing the hunting wild mammals act, which as a country we simply cant manage without and they've already started talking about.

God help us


PS I see from quite a few people on here I'm not the only one tired of a certain posters inane anti feminist ramblings getting in the way of reality. As Admin cant you section him under the mental health act and block the word 'feminist' from all posts thus giving him nothing to post about so the rest of us can get back to some sort of normality? Please? pretty please????

[happytorq]

They're already to far right wing but never enough to compete with the Tories, they'll end up being in opposition for generations. They need to take the opportunity to take a new progressive direction. Look towards the Greens, SNP, PC and yes, even UKIP for policy ideas - I actually beleive that some of UKIPs more liberal policies could find a home in the Labour party.

They drifted right under Blair, and it got them elected. For better or worse, it seems that a purely liberal or leftist party won't fly in the UK right now. (You see the same thing in the States actually, as even a nominally 'liberal' party like the Democrats are pretty conservative on quite a few issues.)

It looks to me as though the reason that the Tories won was because the they were able to gain a lot of ground by capturing Liberal Democrat seats. (Torbay's own Adrian Sanders was a victim of this) - presumably this backlash came because people felt the lib-dem part of a coalition was of no use. In fact, the Lib Dems are in a real mess now, which is a surprise given that they've been making progress for getting on for 20 years.

And, like it or not, the Tories got more of the popular vote than anybody else. You can make the case that the SNP had a very strong showing and got way more seats than their vote number warranted, but that's how FPP voting works, and there has been little effort to change the way those votes are counted. By my rough estimate, if you were to go with proportional representation, parties would have been given this many seats:

Conservative: 240
Labour: 198
UKIP: 82
Lib-Dem: 51
SNP: 31
Green: 25

If that were to happen you'd almost certainly have got a UKIP/Conservative coalition, which sounds terrifying.

[PhilGull]

I still can't work out why the Lib Dems seemed to get punished so heavily while the Conservatives were so handsomely rewarded. Poor old Nick Clegg given dogs abuse for student fees which were introduced and then increased by Labour and increased again by the Tory majority in the coalition - poor bastard.

Added in 5 minutes 42 seconds:
Interesting article by Polly Toynbee in the Guardian today talking about how Labour should return to early Blairism but definitrly not late Blairism - not sure I agree but suddenly realised, I don't remember any Labour representative mentioning any of this in the election build-up, far too concerned with apologising for the recession they didn't cause to point out all the good they did when last in Government.
"These days it’s unfashionable to praise Blair for anything, but as David Walker and I charted in our book The Verdict, his leadership brought the minimum wage, tax credits leaving a million fewer poor children, NHS funding raised to the EU average, massive school rebuilding, standards and teacher quality up, free museums and galleries, civil partnership, universal free nursery schooling, 3,500 SureStarts, one million fewer poor pensioners thanks to pension credit, a child trust fund, education maintenance allowance, the Freedom of Information Act – and the soon to be abolished Human Rights Act."

[EmetEdadsBeard]

Sorry, rambled on a bit there........

[Gullscorer]

Sorry, rambled on a bit there........

Yes, you did..

[chunkygull]

Couldnt believe it when I saw this article and I have to say I am thoroughly disgusted. M P's that lost their seat in the election get a golden handshake pay off or effectively a redundancy package. Its an elected office, you lose you go, end of story, simple as that. Its not like a normal job. Its not like the job is redundant, its still there, they havent been elected somebody else has, so in effect they are rewarded for failure.

As if these people arent paid enough or have enough perks when they are in office.

£11.5 million this is costing the tax payer. They keep banging on about how much money this country hasnt got, but look how much practices like this costs and how much of our money gets absolutely wasted.
Their pay off is a months salary for every year served up to 6 years, so £33,000. The kicker though is they get up to 57,000 to close down their office or for "winding up expenses". That is truly outrageous, as if that needs that sort of money, ok a lot will be used to pay off their staff I expect, but what a joke. Most will just move onto the next shyster or follow their boss into their next easy money venture.



Check it out here -
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general ... ayout.html

[Gullscorer]

Electoral Reform Society report: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... paign=1490