[Closed] Election Campaign

Ok I'm doubly confused now. So not only are the labour party the economically responsible balancing the books austerity party, but the tories according Cameron are now the 'party of working people'. What next? No doubt the libdems will announce themselves as the 'Pride of Eng-er-lan, send the b*ggers back' party.

[quote=dazh said]Ok I'm doubly confused now. So not only are the labour party the economically responsible balancing the books austerity party, but the tories according Cameron are now the 'party of working people'. What next? No doubt the libdems will announce themselves as the 'Pride of Eng-er-lan, send the b*ggers back' party.

Indeed, looks like you'll be voting for continued austerity daz.

But the medicine will have more sugar under labour

Was an interesting piece on the radio about this

The argument was they had both forgotten to appeal to the middle ground floating voters and now they were panicking and appealing to them to the degree they have flipped sides

Shows how little difference there is between them and it is pretty strange to see

there is almost nothing [ no lie] a political party wont say in the run up to an election to harvest votes

The three manifestos announced so far:

Labour manifesto: http://www.labour.org.uk/manifesto
Green manifesto: https://www.conservatives.com/manifesto.aspx
Conservative manifesto: https://www.greenparty.org.uk/we-stand-for/2015-manifesto.html

[quote=miketually said]The three manifestos announced so far:
Labour manifesto: http://www.labour.org.uk/manifesto
Green manifesto: https://www.conservatives.com/manifesto.aspx
Conservative manifesto: https://www.greenparty.org.uk/we-stand-for/2015-manifesto.html

😆

Here you go JY, I am sure you do remember this really

[url= http://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/09/06/latest-scottish-referendum-poll-yes-lead/ ]Yes leads by 2%[/url]

JY my view is that elections in the past 20 years are won by the party in the centre, from time to time the Tories drift off right and Labour go left and usually that's where they come unstuck. Labour have not been able to be radical as they cannot afford to be financially and from a credibility standpoint, the non-dom pledge even they admitted would probably cost money. Tory announcements have been much more broadly appealing. their standpoint has long been you cannot afford a welfare state if the economy is broken.

Perhaps you have forgotten my opening line on this thread in reply to your claim

They all [ bar one] Had no winning and no won

🙄
It seems that you cannot accept that one "wrong" poll in hundreds does not make this statement true

proved to be very inaccurate in Scotland for the referendum

From your link

The latest survey, conducted for The Sunday Times with less than two weeks to go until voting day, has YES at 51% and NO at 49% – [b]the first lead for the independence camp registered by YouGov, or any polling company, since regular polling on September 18th’s referendum began.[/b]

The numbers represent a four-point increase for YES support since YouGov’s last Scottish independence poll conducted a week ago (August 28-September 1). Opposition to independence has fallen from 53% to 49%.

[b]The last poll, fielded after the second televised independence debate (which Alex Salmond was widely regarded as having won)[/b], was the first to represent a real possibility for a ‘Yes’ win, with only a six point gap between the sides.

[b]The percentages reported exclude those who wouldn’t vote and don’t know. With those groups included ‘Yes’ are on 47% and ‘No’ are on 45%[/b].

Its not even a majority when you include all surveys and they were pretty much spot on for the Yes vote 😉

[s]If you cannot see this, and it appears you cannot, will you please just stop repeating yourself and then i can stop repeating myself[/s]
I am not replying to your inevitable denial/refusal to accept reality , as its clear facts dont matter to you

 

😳 Oops, good job I'm not a Green candidate or anything... Too late for a sneaky edit, too. 😳

The three manifestos announced so far:

* Labour manifesto: http://www.labour.org.uk/manifesto
* Green manifesto: https://www.greenparty.org.uk/we-stand-for/2015-manifesto.html
* Conservative manifesto: https://www.conservatives.com/manifesto.aspx

Has anyone had any canvassers?

I have had no one at the door, no leaflets, not billboards - just a UKIP bloke at the station last week (but with not enough time for some fun!). Is there really an election going on?

Weve had leaflets from everyone, bar the greens. And labour canvasser, also quite a few labour placards and stickers up around here

Labour defo seem to have more boots on the ground and I imagine it'll swing back to them from the current Tory, who only just got it last time

Conversely my fb account gets loads of Torry advertising posts

So there seems to be a difference between the canvassing tactics

We've had a leaflet from the greens and some fantastically overwrought "newsletters" from the red and blue corners.

SNP canvassed my street last night, chap was quite pleasant and left straight away when I said a firm 'No thanks', didn't even bother trying to give me a leaflet.

Looking at the sorry state of their cars I'd say canvassing for the SNP doesn't pay well (at all?!).

SNP got less than 12% of the vote (came in 4th) in the constituency last time, so would need a large swing to take it. And the constituency is part of an area that voted 60% against independence, so an SNP win would be a big deal. Can't see it myself.

All SNP canvassers are volunteers.

Has anyone had any canvassers?

There are areas of the town where canvassers from all parties are active, but they're all pretty short on members/volunteers so they're going to struggle to get around everyone. If you live in a safe council ward and/or in a safe parliamentary seat, it's very unlikely that anyone will knock on your door or hand-deliver a leaflet. It's all about focused effort.

Lots of talk of "The Good Life" today. This from the Guardian made me laugh.

[img] [/img]

But the medicine will have more sugar under labour

It's not medicine, if anything it's poison. Which is why the Tories eased off the so-called medicine just in time for things to look a tad more positive as the country prepares to go to the polls. If the medicine was doing any good then you would expect them to double the dose in the run up to a general election.

Previous Labour governments weren't in the least bothered about the UK having deficits just like the previous Tory governments weren't - both Thatcher and John Major ran substantial deficits.

Then Cameron and Osborne come along and use the deficit as a pretext to justify ideologically motivate cuts. The Labour Party, highjacked by self-serving right-wing careerists and too pathetic and spineless to challenge them, and not wanting to upset the Daily Mail, signs up to the policy and makes the same commitment to clear the deficit through cuts. Only they claim they will be better at implementing right-wing policies than the Conservatives. Oh and "fairer" of course, they will be fairer...........[i]"Vote for us we're just like the Tories but fairer".[/i] FFS

ideologically motivated cuts

As opposed of course to the opposing policies which saw an ideologically motivated expansion of the state sector?

Or is it only 'ideology' when the Tories do it?

Of course not Z-11 that's ridiculous. And I certainly have an ideological commitment to the expansion of the state sector. There is nothing wrong with being ideologically motivated.

Today's Tory Party like their neoconservative mates across the Atlantic have a strong ideological commitment to less social provisions and social ownership. However they come out with some bollocks about the deficit and how it must be cleared to justified their neoconservative agenda (while completely ignoring the fact that all previous Tory governments for the last 40 years had deficits).

Any spending cuts by Cameron/Osborne are ideologically motivated and have **** all to do with the deficit, a deficit can be cleared without cuts. It is perfectly correct to point out that Tory spending cuts are ideologically motivated.

ernie_lynch - Member
There is nothing wrong with being ideologically motivated.

Which is interesting given...

Any spending cuts by Cameron/Osborne are ideologically motivated

They will be relieved!!!

teamhurtmore - Member

ernie_lynch - Member
There is nothing wrong with being ideologically motivated.

Which is interesting given...

Any spending cuts by Cameron/Osborne are ideologically motivated

They will be relieved!!!

What appears to be the problem THM......you seem to be struggling ?

Nowt Ernie, it's all very amusing to read. Light relief too when you take jnto account how crap the real debate has been. Cheers!

You're obviously easily amused then. Presumably this is the first time that you have heard the claim that Tory spending cuts are ideologically motivated.

It's a widely made charge by opponents of the Conservative Party and it's strange that you should apparently have been oblivious of it. I would have expected that someone who purports to read the FT would have been better informed.

Indeed the FT in its Budget 2015 report last month wrote the following :

[b][i]
Senior Liberal Democrats attacked the Conservatives on Wednesday over their plans for austerity in the next parliament, accusing them of making ideologically motivated cuts that would reduce spending to its lowest point in 50 years. [/i][/b]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/36d84e54-cd86-11e4-9144-00144feab7de.html#axzz3XKKWaAxF

Presumably despite being allegedly an avid reader of the FT you didn't read their budget reports. Had you done so it might have bought you some "light relief" when you take into account how crap the real debate about the budget in the FT must have been for you.

ernie_lynch - Member
You're obviously easily amused then.

Yes, it pays to be at times like these, correct

Presumably

Presumptions can be very dangerous especially twice in a single post 😉

this is the first time that you have heard the claim that Tory spending cuts are ideologically motivated.

On the contrary, I am regularly misinformed on here (notes spending plans of all major parties). More discerning journals, fortunately, note and lament.the lack of ideology, vision and strategy displayed by our political leaders

and it's strange that you should apparently have been oblivious of it.

That would be strange, I agree.

I would have expected that someone who purports to read the FT

The what?

would have been better informed.

I rely on a STW grocer to do that for me. Is the advice not up to scratch? Must be a bad apple day!!! 😉

But when all is said and done, I can always fall back on the knowledge that

ernie_lynch - Member
There is nothing wrong with being ideologically motivated

😀 😀

Have a nice day. Mines a pippin (not to be confused with a Victoria)

Surely Ernie's point is that being honest about your idealistic motivation is better than dressing up as guff about the country being skint/broken/whatever. Thm you remind us so often that austerity is yet to start, yet we have had so many changes made apparently in the name of austerity.
If your ideals are to dismantle the state then why not just be honest about it?
If your ideals are to renationalise public services in which there is no realistic 'choice' eg the railways and health system then why not be honest about that too?
Instead we get oblique jokes that you need to have read the last week's argu-threads on here in order to begin to understand. :/

Btw choose an apple with a higher percentage or polyphenols thm, science suggests you might be less of a burden on the state in later years.

julianwilson - Member
Surely Ernie's point is that being honest about your idealistic motivation is better than dressing up as guff about the country being skint/broken/whatever.

True

Thm you remind us so often that austerity is yet to start,

More that there is much more to come - see OBR for details

yet we have had so many changes made apparently in the nameof austerity.

Indeed, we have had lots of sloppy terminology - progressive, currency = assets etc

If your ideals are to dismantle the state then why not just be honest about it?

Are you talking about a party that maintains gov spending within historic boundaries and ring fences major parts of it?

Instead we get oblique jokes that you need to have read the last week's argu-threads on here in order to begin to understand. :/

Banter!!!

But I took Ernie's suggestion and had a look at the FT and their political columnist

Voters will enter the polling booth with a sketchy idea of the economic choices on offer. The Tories’ commitment to overall budget balance, Labour’s preference for capital spending — these and other distinctions are too opaque to move the average Briton, who knows that policies are changeable anyway. Personality, by contrast, is relatively constant. As their pencils hover over the ballot, people will have a gut impression of the characters asking for the right to rule them, and decide accordingly. Voters know that superficialities are what really run deep.

Thank goodness for quality journalism!

So the deficit isn't a problem, the Tories are using it as a pretext for ideologically driven reduction of the state and Labour are being bullied by the right-wing press into making cuts just to make themselves look "credible".

I think that's right isn't it ?

so...
tories have a plan to do something (but probably won't)
labour can only say that anything the tories say isn't costed/funded
libdems have a contingency plan which is to have a contingency plan and learned that Gordon Brown ran an economy by using the word "prudent", so they borrowed that word too.
and ukip have serious drivel this time rather than just drivel

that's all I've managed to ascertain from BBC breakfast news.

Budget cuts where required for two reasons, spending was excessive and income (taxes etc) where falling due to the recession. Even with Tory spending cuts our deficit is £90bn per annum, with a Labour government it would have been 50% larger, possibly more. The French economy has continued shrinking as Hollande opted for spending instead of reforms and his tax rises backfired resulting in lower levels of income for the state.

Spending cuts were essential and any ideology largely irrelevant.

What I want to know is.... has Junky hi-jacked THM account?

Just look at your reply to Ernie about an hour ago....

ernie says this

THM says that

Ernie says you said that but what about these

THM says these? Look at those

.....

Poor .... go away and have a little think... 🙂

Good article in the i this morn.... about agruing over the scraps and missing the bigger issues.

Labour has been talking about raising an extra £7.5bn from tightening tax-avoidance and evasion, and from ending non-dom status. Even if it managed to do so, that would be only 1 per cent of its spending, or 10 per cent of the deficit. It would be like someone on average earnings, which after tax are around £21,000 a year, suddenly getting a windfall of an extra £210.

The Tories are equally guilty. They have a plan to raise £1bn from cuts in pension tax relief on the highest earners to fund the removal of family homes up to £1m from inheritance tax. This is supposedly revenue neutral, though no one knows whether this would be the case. But to have as a flagship policy something that is so tiny in the context of the economy as a whole is bizarre.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/hamish-mcrae/a-billion-here-a-billion-there--and-not-a-word-of-it-matters-10177097.html

Although this is second time McRae has raised the point.... he still hasn't educated us on the larger/real issues that he thinks we should be discussing.

Anyone here like to do that ?

spending was excessive

[b]% of GDP spent on public goods[/b] (from p49 of [url= https://www.greenparty.org.uk/assets/files/manifesto/Green_Party_2015_General_Election_Manifesto.pdf ]Green manifesto[/url])
[list][*]Denmark - 58%[/*]
[*]France - 56%[/*]
[*]Belgium - 53%[/*]
[*]UK 2010 - 47%[/*]
[*][i]Uk (Green Party plan) - 45%[/i][/*]
[*]Germany - 45%[/*]
[*]Spain - 42%[/*]
[*]United States - 41%[/*]
[*][i]UK 2015 (planned) - 39%[/i][/*]
[*][i]UK 2020 (planned) - 26%[/i][/*][/list]

Let's be honest the whole campaign is sh*t with all parties simply fiddling around the edges, because much as we moan about the Greeks, the UK population are no better at excepting bad news. The problem is that if no action is taken then eventually rather than the UK sorting it's own problems, external forces will act to sort it out instead and probably not for the better.

Article on Gilt sales here:

[url= http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11525768/Gilts-strike-as-foreigners-shun-UK-on-gridlock-fears.html ]Gilt sales[/url]

UK 2020 (planned) - 26%

36% actually and assumes spending savings are restricted to managed expenditure budgets.

Excess leverage

Weak productivity

Welcome back supply-side economics - only problems is that they don't give quick results.

Ok for you Ro5ey? (But I take the point 😉 just a rare error!)

I reckon Crosby has fundamentally misunderstood the way the public thinks in this country...the UK is much more sympathetic to 'underdogs' and likes someone who stands up to bullies

the whole campaign is sh*t with all parties simply fiddling around the edges,

My wife said she was going to vote green, I told her fair enough but to read their policies. She's not voting green any more. Same with a squaddie mate, he didn't realise what the greens propose to do to the military! I do wonder if just liked the name......
These people are by no means stupid and deserve a vote as much as anyone else, they just react to whatever their chosen media outlet feed them as you say.

Poor .... go away and have a little think...

Funny though

with a Labour government it would have been 50% larger, possibly more.

The comments on our local Tory candidate's [Facebook] page show that [buying Facebook ads] isn't always effective; lots of negative comments.

[img] ?oh=403a0a4010f900eb2a8d2c1cf4369a5c&oe=55A23D81&__gda__=1440911816_7c0c5ef6b2ebac0ece84cde7622dca57[/img]

He posted a pic of him with a fluffy puppy and the resulting thread almost made me feel sorry for him...almost:

We're talking about the country whose longest-serving PMs in the last century are Thatcher and Blair, right?

True but I do think there's a distaste for the negative campaigning employed so far by the tories. If you look at how they've changed their campaign since Fallon's backstabber hysterics they would seem to agree.

dazh - Member
...I do think there's a distaste for the negative campaigning...

As far as the UK is concerned, it is not a marketing technique ever successfully played by commercial brands, primarily because you are effectively saying "if you even though about X or Y then you're an idiot".

Reckon you could summarise it there - any party that thinks it a good tactic to bully voters by telling them opinions are 'wrong' is playing a high-risk PR strategy.

I'm not so sure, people may say they don't like it but the research says it works.

What I want to know is.... has Junky hi-jacked THM account?

(from p49 of Green manifesto)

We could spend more of our GDP on public goods if our taxes where higher like they are in the most of the countries you quoted, lets start with VAT of food like they have in Germany 8% or France 5.5%

I would say my one curiosity is the US which has very low taxes and generally hates public spending even the Democrats. Needs some more investigation but given the source is the Green's manifesto I think that's a waste of time.

I would say my one curiosity is the US which has very low taxes and generally hates public spending even the Democrats.

It's the classic rightwing trick of pretending they hate the state and state spending, whilst at the same time spending more than their opponents and running higher deficits. As has been pointed out in other threads, rightwing parties have a very poor track record of reducing spending and running surpluses, yet quite cleverly seem to be able to convince the people of the opposite.

Some commentary (originating from Jim Murphy) / analysis of the Tory manifesto which says English MPs will get to veto any vote on English taxes. Together with other sections on English Votes for English laws it seems clear they intend to introduce English Income Tax once the Scots have the same. So the tax free allowance will be set nationally accross the UK but the rates and bands will be determined locally. The Scots will have the freedom to introduce a 50p top rate for example but that can only be done in England if a majority of English MPs vote for it (or strictly speaking don't veto it)

Document below, page 69 and 72

[url] http://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/manifesto2015/ConservativeManifesto2015.pdf [/url]

I've not been paying attention today as I've actually had some work to do. I see someone in the form of the Libdems has finally mentioned education. Bit odd it's taken this long seeing as there's a bit of a crisis with teachers demoralised, a lack of places in primary schools, class sizes back above 30 etc. I'd have thought it would've been a much bigger issue but labour and the tories barely mentioned it.