Tories fire the starting gun on the election campaign

God help us all!

All of a sudden this fixed term parliament seems like a very, very, very bad idea. Looks like our political masters have nothing else to do from now until May but hector us into voting for them. Apparently Ed is going to call round to everyones house individually for a chat about things (no doubt so you can feature in a subsequent “I met a (insert trade here) in (insert name of town here)….*

And Dave’s sounding even more smug, condescending, and I-know-best-you-plebs than ever…

I’m considering boycotting all news, current affairs programmes and papers until June. How are you planning on coping then?

I heard Miliband crowbarring in all of his pre-programmed sound bites on 5LIVE this morning and wanted to weep.

We’re on a Tory / UKIP rollercoaster to Hell.

Ed Miliband has promised that labour will have 4 million conversations with voters between now and the election. I’m no expert, but laying siege to people’s doorsteps like deranged jehovahs witnesses might not be a good strategy. Also I wonder if that will be more or less than the number of times he says ‘you know’ in a speech?

I don’t watch or listen to news programmes or buy newspapers so it’ll not affect me and I won’t get wound up by it or give any form of toss.

I am preparing. I sent my local council an email yesterday to see if the ‘No Cold Calling Zone’ I am in will also apply to electionering twonks.

I have also been practicing shouting a lot.

..and that tory poster, did someone actually get paid to come up with that slogan? If labour have anyone with a half a brain in their campaign they’ll already be plastering billboards with ‘We’re on the road to nowhere’ posters and telly adverts with the accompanying music.

Ed Miliband has promised

And a politians promise is worth what?

I expect that the online image banks are about to be plundered for generic bland, non-specific, happy-feely, ethnically diverse, images of dear old England by the Tories, if that first effort is anything to go by. I expect that before long they’ll come out with something to rival this for utterly patronising cluelessness….

Which is truly beyond parody. Labour are no doubt nipping round to see everyone as they can’t afford posters

All of a sudden this fixed term parliament seems like a very, very, very bad idea.

It’s worse in Spain – we’ve got some local+autonomous community elections in 2015, then general in 2016.

dazh – Member

…and that tory poster,

Peter Brookes

Any opinion polls out yet?

[sticks fingers in ears and continues to vote for who I normally vote for]

also

[try not to let Red Ed’s image put me off]

And again on that poster, I notice they have ‘The deficit halved’ on there. You have to admire the barefaced cheek (or idiocy) of this when you consider that completely eradicating the deficit was their no 1 promise of the last election.

Glad you started a thread, I was considering the same.

5 months of the GE campaign will be less painful than 2 years for the Scottish referendum so I’m thankful for small mercies. Looks likely that the GE in 2015 will be followed by another in 2016 or 17 as a minority government fails to survive.

Milliband’s “the NHS will be destroyed in 5 years under the Tories” is nearly as ridiculous as Blair’s 45 minute claim. He’s going to have to come up with something much better than that. The BBC challenged him on this today and some leary Labour types tried to shout the BBC down, to his credit Milliband just answered the question

BBC jeered at press conference

And again on that poster, I notice they have ‘The deficit halved’ on there. You have to admire the barefaced cheek (or idiocy) of this when you consider that completely eradicating the deficit was their no 1 promise of the last election.

They did the best they could, the problems they faced where much worse than they had expected. Had Labour been in power the deficit would have spiraled out of control as it has in France with Holland now reversing his “disasterous spending your way out of trouble” plans

If those are the claims they’re making now jambalaya, just imagine where we’re going to be by the end of April?

Vote conservative and defence cuts will allow ISIS to take control of large parts of Yorkshire, and put out live beheadings on ITV2 in between episodes of TOWIE

At the local level yes

At the national less so – but plenty of opportunities to give Econ tutees some “spot the deliberate mistake” questions

Imagine the rection of the coalition had eliminated the deficit as promised – the anguish over the future cuts is bad enough. But the deficit halved message is a wee bit cheeky. The deficit has not halved. The % of GDP that the deficit represents has halved in value. Quite a different thing.

That plus labour’s NHS lies – election BS bingo cards ready. Ignore UKIP they have filled their card already.

I’m considering boycotting all news, current affairs programmes and papers until June.

Me too.

Vote conservative and defence cuts will allow ISIS to take control of large parts of Yorkshire, and put out live beheadings on ITV2 in between episodes of TOWIE

Where do I sign?

I don’t watch or listen to news programmes or buy newspapers so it’ll not affect me and I won’t get wound up by it or give any form of toss.

I’m considering boycotting all news, current affairs programmes and papers until June

Good plan

Im so glad that the Chinese Communist party deal with all this sort of stuff for me so I don’t have to worry about it.

Luckily we don’t have a TV, so will be pretty oblivious to the whole thing!

The Mash sums up labours strategy

@binners, I have no idea what claims the Tories are making, I was just posting up my comments. I do agree that the fixed term parliament has the unpleasant side effect of extending the election campaign. I’d be happy to vote tomorrow and get it over and down with, for now.

What chance of an informed debate and a vote based on the issues and policies rather than I’d never bottled for them ever because of….. (insert now irrelevant historical event)

If the madness in Scotland showed anything it was there is possible an appetite for engagement, make voting compulsory and challenge for policy and substance over spin and style.

@mike if you make voting compulsory you will have a large number of people who genuinely don’t give a t-ss influencing the result based upon a whim. It will just move the level of political debate down another few notches.

On other matters I saw Ed Balls called Russell Brand a “Pound Shop Ben Elton” in response to Brand calling Balls a c-nt, that’s a quality put down.

When Wallace talks about a once in a generation election – did he not recall the recent loser who tried to play that card?

Good to see that the FT has debunked Burnham’s NHS nonsense today. Talk about bllx scaremongering, makes UKIP look honest.

When parties that give me an erection tell lies, it’s a bit cheeky, but when parties I don’t like say something I don’t like, its all just BS and HS and other abbreviations I need to make up because I find the actual words just horrifying. Just you wait till I can shoehorn AS and his BS BoD into the thread…just you wait, you impertinent plebs. I’ll be masturbating on the Internet sooooooo much, your screen will vibrate. I might even troll other posters so much, I’ll have to be given an enforced rest for a few days.

I find the door to door and street canvassing fun, it’s the ideal opportunity to throw the f***ers a curveball to see how they handle it

This election year I will be utilising a mix of “what is your party going to do to increase access for off road cycling” and “what is your parties position on legalising hunting” (the latter being particularly challenging for them as they need to guess if I’m pro or anti)

Have fun playing games with them, it’s the only way to keep sane!

Vote Green.. at least its voting for people who give a shit about the planet.

Ninfan +1

Add how did you vote on Syrian intervention? Should bike helmets be cumpulsory?

Ed Balls today: “we will inherit the tory deficit” 😆

Vote Green.. at least its voting for people who give a shit about the planet.

Yeah, the greens I just ask their policy on homeopathy 😆

Ed Balls today “we will inherit the tory deficit”

Any party today, we will inherit the previous party’s ****-ups unless of course, we get re-elected, in which case we’ll spend the next five years trying to fix the ****-ups of the party that was in power before us.

Newsnight was fairly good on the election tonight, a nice piece on result modelling.

One thing on the Tory poster which amused me is that it’s a German landscape – oops !

One thing on the Tory poster which amused me is that it’s a German landscape – oops !

Welcome to Saturday.

So UKIP and the Tories morphing in more ways than one! 😉

if you make voting compulsory you will have a large number of people who genuinely don’t give a t-ss influencing the result based upon a whim

Aa opposed to a medium sized number

sneaky bastards have lowered the price of petrol and then also said it’ll go back up in May… I’m not falling for that you ball bags.

I like how mr Hurtmore’s economics class (and by that i mean us in here) are being taught that manipulating the budget defecit (a lie so blatant and contrary to such basic economics that even i spotted it before it made the news) is just cheeky, but the ‘scaremongering’ about the nhs is ‘blx”.
Context is everything, kids! 😉

Btw who else is feeling like the job creation bits are also a bit, well, ‘cheeky’?