Election Campaign

Having a hard time here, which one of those is a nationalist flag?

Incidentally, the bile that article is deriding is exactly the same that you spew on a daily basis. TBH all that post did was make you look either stupid or a hypocrite.

SNP are a means to an end though I suspect you don’t quite understand the end that some of us seek. I could take independence or leave it but in the more immediate future a message needs to be sent that business cannot continue as usual.

With political, economic, and state power, THM.

If I’m sounding like a Tory then I’ve seriously misjudged them. I had no idea they agreed with me that the people have a legitimate and unique right to political, economic, and state power.

Understand it perfectly squirrel. It’s the only bit that is true. I’m afraid you may get a shock though. Could have sworn the yellow one with the black bit on represented a nationalist party, must be mistaken.

Just joshing Ernie, we both know state power disempowers people!

Epicyclo – when Dave or Ed come visiting? I live in a key marginal, so we’d had the dubious pleasure of both. Not that you’d ever know it, of course.

They were both whisked in, unannounced, had their rictus grin photoshoots with the local candidates, in airless rooms, with audiences of the fawning party faithful, then whisked off to their next engagement. You saw it on that evenings local news, but you’d never have known they were there. The party apparatchiks made sure there wasn’t a cat in hells chance that they’d actually encounter an actual voter! What?!!! Someone with actual opinions?!! Or even worse…. Questions?!!! Not a ****ing chance!!!!

And that’s why nobody has any enthusiasm for either main party or their carefully choreographed charades!

I’d pay good money to see Dave go for a meet-the-voters walkabout in Bury town centre. See what reception he got.

Oh…. and whipping up petty and divisive nationalism is fine when Dave’s doing it. Which he’s been doing rather a lot. It’s only nasty and unpleasant when other people do it!

It’s laughable to accuse the SNP of nationalism given the present stance of the Tory party. Where petty, small-minded and hysterical nationalist scaremongering seems to have become their main electoral pitch!

It’s nasty, divisive, short-termist and pathetic, with potentially devastating long term consequences that they couldn’t apparently care less about! But then that’s dave and the rest of this present shower to a tee!

It’s laughable to accuse the SNP of nationalism

When their manifesto starts “Stronger for who?” And the N stands for what? How else should it be described

Nationalist (cross)
Left wing (cross)
Progressive (cross)

What’s left? (Excuse the pun)

Why did you chop binners sentence in half THM?

The full uncut sentence is : “It’s laughable to accuse the SNP of nationalism given the present stance of the Tory party.”

It’s a perfectly reasonable claim. And just to make it clearer he goes on :

“Where petty, small-minded and hysterical nationalist scaremongering seems to have become their main electoral pitch!”

Editing and taking out of context someone’s comment to make them look stupid is one thing, but I really don’t see the point when the full comment and the full context is right there for everyone to see as clear as daylight.

My point is that it’s a bit rich accusing people of nationalism, when there has been no more cynical display of it since Dave stood on the steps of number 10 the day after the referendum, and indulged in a display of the most shameless, distasteful example of exactly that he was criticising. And he’s not let up since!

It personally disgusts me! At least the SNP have nationalist in their title, so there’s the clue. What the present Tory party are indulging in is absolutely abhorrent! Questioning the legitimacy of certain areas of what’s meant to be a democracy? And there will be horrendous long term consequences to that! For all of us! Change the names, and It wouldn’t look out of place at the breakup of Yugoslavia! As certain cooler headed and wiser Tories have pointed out: it’s a very very dangerous game he’s playing! And all for his own opportunistic short term political ends!

Nationalism is never pretty! But the Tories are way more guilty of exploiting it at the moment than the SNP!

Odd, when they are one of the main beneficiaries, but if you say so. Dave will be wearing a brown shirt next week.

Opportunistic short term gains – politicians?

So you’re saying he Tory party isn’t presently basing its main electoral pitch, somewhat desperately, and horribly cynically, on stoking up petty English nationalism?

Seriously….?

I don’t see anti-English rhetoric from the SNP. Their pitch seems much more positive than that. And look at the response of the electorate? But shameless, cynical, and horribly arrogant anti-scottish rhetoric is all I seem to be hearing from Dave. It’s disgusting!

THM – I’m not sure I will be shocked really, as I said I have no illusions as to what the SNP have been doing for the last eight years or what they hope to acheive in the next eight. they are populist, pure and simple but I’d still far rather have left wing populism than right wing denial. Sure, they’re another party that claims the left field but at least they deliver some progressive measures rather than what the rest have been doing with their time.

For your own records that includes free prescriptions, free public transport and maintaining free tuition (even if it was a Lib Dem policy). Sure their taxation hasn’t been, well, anything but in fairness it was never supposed to be, all the extra tax powers do is pass all the costs onto Scots as opposed to the block grant, it would be political suicide to even contemplate using them. That being said I’m well aware of NHS problems, missing commitments to reregulate public transport (wonder why?) and the ‘burden’* that council tax freezing has placed upon local authorities.

What, in comparison, has everyone else been delivering? If even one SNP leftist populist policy makes it down south I would declare that a victory, I’m sick of seeing people I know getting screwed over by the system and none of the current three have made any commitment to righting those wrongs.

* Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there is a burden but it would be naiive to suggest that they have trimmed the fat appropriately.

Oddly enough THM is wrong about the N in Snp as is Banners . It stands for national.Clearly the Snp is a nationalist party but it isn’t in the name. I wonder when the Conservatives will drop the unionist part from their name?

how many poor folk in tertiary education exactly….the list goes on!

A lot more than there used to be.

Editing and taking out of context someone’s comment to make them look stupid is one thing, but I really don’t see the point when the full comment and the full context is right there for everyone to see as clear as daylight.

Has he mentioned how deceitful the SNP can be when misleading people ?

I don’t see anti-English rhetoric from the SNP.

Apparently some english are insisting the SNP are doing this. IIRC its the exact same one who agree you must never ever be in govt with the SNP as they cannot be trusted

Oh the irony on both counts

wanmankylung – Member
how many poor folk in tertiary education exactly….the list goes on!
A lot more than there used to be.

Wanmanetc

I will stick to the experts thanks

The abolition of the graduate endowment fee for Scottish undergraduates in 2008 has become the totemic policy of the SNP but it has not been universally praised.

Prof Riddell says the abolition of tuition fees has had no discernible impact on poor Scots’ access to universities. At the same time, the number of further education colleges has fallen from 37 in 2011-12 to 20 in 2014-15.

Research by Lucy Hunter Blackburn shows the SNP halved spending on student grants in real terms, meaning that many poorer students are worse off under its system. “Scotland is the only part of the UK where borrowing is highest among students from poorer backgrounds”, the former senior civil servant says.

Is that we mean by a progressive government that is proud of its record on education? Either easily pleased or deceived – you choose.

Good spot Gordie and I stand corrected! It’s was http://www.snp.org that describes themselves as left leaning nationalists that confuse me. But I know now from here, that we not allowed to use that term any more.

That’s a little unfair THM, as I assume you are aware the SNP promised in their manifesto to abolish all student debt, I’m sure they will get around to it some time, maybe after their child care reforms.

😀

Use what term you like THM. If you need any more help let me know

Progressive policies?
Fiscal responsibility?

Starters for ten….

Still no one left to blame in a few days time.

#EdStone

😀

Another incisive foray into political threads there CPT 😉

I tend to ignore them these days, Junky. I found I was boring myself, so heaven knows what others were thinking!

That was just too funny not to share though! As mentioned, it’s like no one in his team stopped and said, “Was this in The Thick of It or not?”

You in favour of Downing St errections then JY ? 🙂

I think I said it was full of dicks so not quite the same thing 😉

CPT yes it was quite surreal /bonkers

You’re confusing the graduate endownment with tuition fees. They were/are completely different things.

Also, student grants? Not since ~1997 unless you’re in medicine.

No wonder you’re confused if you can’t find sources who know what they’re talking about.

surreal /bonkers

How much are they paying Axelrod for his brilliance?

I note that all mention of it has been scrubbed from Ed and Labour’s twitter accounts as well. As if they’re saying “What stone? No. No idea what you’re talking about.”

If anyone can explain how a national police force is progressive?

I don’t think SNP supporters are anti English they are anti anyone who doesn’t agree with them. I know some mostly Scottish folk who’ve been verbally and physically abused for not coming out in support of the SNP

Oh why not!

Plenty more out there.

Sadly, none so far reference owls.

Sorry squirrel I mistook the Uni of Edinburgh as a sensible source. My mistake. What do they know, hey. Good job THM jnr didn’t apply there! It was a v good Uni in my day.

It’s appalling that anyone should be abused or intimidated for their political views or indeed any other views.This behaviour does occur from a tiny minority of nutjobs on all sides of the debate.It’s not a characteristic of the vast majority of Snp supporters equally it is not a characteristic of the vast majority of supporters of the labour tory or liberal parties.

It seems as if the Tory tactic this election is, “we can’t possibly overplay our let’s frighten everyone with the SNP bogeyman card”.

The Tories brought one of their big guns here in Croydon to warn people that if they voted Labour the SNP would demand that any Labour government ignores Croydon.

“If you think Croydon will get a look-in under that government, you can forget it. You’d have a weak Prime Minister and the Scottish Nationalists would have the decisive say and they are not interested in Croydon.” – George Osborne

Croydon ‘would not get a look-in under Labour government’, claims George Osborne

.

.

Incidentally George Osborne also said that Croydon was, quote :
“one of the fastest-growing, most-prosperous communities in London”.[/b]

This is Tory “prosperity” :

Twenty per cent of Croydon’s young people living in poverty, report shows

ONE in five children in Croydon is living in poverty, with more than a third surviving below the breadline in the borough’s most deprived areas.

6,000 households in north Croydon living in fuel poverty[/url]

More than 11 per cent of households in the north of Croydon don’t have enough money to heat their homes this winter, according to the government’s own statistics.

Poverty in your area[/url]

Croydon has above-average levels of deprivation when compared with other London boroughs

So-called ‘in-work poverty’ soars by 59% under Coalition as more people with jobs are forced to claim housing benefit

The areas with the biggest increase in claimants by working families include Croydon (up by 1,100 per cent)

It’s economically grim down south here in Croydon[/url]

According to Trust for London, Croydon offers the lowest pay rates of any borough south of the river.

Last year Croydon had the eighth highest rate of possession orders (when landlords are granted the right to evict tenants) of all English local authorities – and the second highest by number of orders. Around 1 in 20 of all Croydon residents are on the council housing waiting list.

Obviously George Osborne thinks he can talk up how well Croydon is doing in the same way as he talks up how well the economy is doing, it is however bollocks, as the facts prove.

Shocking stats Ernie and interesting to compare with how they stack up over time, isn’t it.

http://www.londonspovertyprofile.org.uk/downloads/LondonPovertyProfile.pdf

SNP leaders say that because the 2011 Fixed-term Parliaments Act makes it very difficult to dissolve parliament, voting down a budget would not be a fatal blow for a minority Labour government but would merely force it to come back with revised proposals.

😀 😀

Apparently some english are insisting the SNP are doing this. IIRC its the exact same one who agree you must never ever be in govt with the SNP as they cannot be trusted

I for one think you cannot be in government with the SNP as they can be totally trusted to pursue an agenda which furthers their fundamental aim to see an independent Acotland at all costs no matter how great to the UK or to Scotland. You certain,y know exactly what you’ll get with the SNP it’s just not what they tell you.

Sorry squirrel I mistook the Uni of Edinburgh as a sensible source. My mistake.

Evidently.

Because what I said is true. Unless there is something in that report that has been missed out then it certainly does look like they haven’t the foggiest what they are actually talking about. Bursaries and grants are two very different things, as are tuition fees and graduate endownments (and the SNP never haad anything to do with scrapping tuition fees).

I couldn’t give a stuff who wrote it, if it claims what you say it does it’s badly written pish a high school student should be embarrassed to hand in.

Game changer:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11579451/Lily-Savage-star-Paul-OGrady-to-leave-Britain-if-Conservatives-wins-election.html

Who wouldn’t want their Sunday Radio 2 to be just a little less depressing?

teamhurtmore – Member

Prof Riddell says the abolition of tuition fees has had no discernible impact on poor Scots’ access to universities

DISCLAIMER: This stuff is ridiculously complicated and counterintuitive because of the way university funding and placement works and the number of simultaneous changes in practice and environment… it’s entirely possible some of my comments below will not be correct, but they’re based on a pretty good understanding of the facts.

Over the timescale we’ve seen a substantial increase in the number of applications and acceptances from deprived backgrounds (not specifically low income, the Scottish sector uses a system called SIMD which while pretty flawed in a lot of ways, captures more relevant factors than income alone).

Sadly we’ve seen a proportional decrease in applications from low income households from the RUK since the increase in fees. This isn’t a like-for-like comparison of course but I can categorically say that we believe that the increase in tuition fees has led to a fall in low-income applications from the RUK (*) despite a huge increase in the resource we put into attracting them (literally millions of quid), and that the abolition of fees and other measures in the same timescale has led to an increase in SIMD applications.

(* bearing in mind that there are extra costs for an RUK student studying in Scotland so it might be that many of these students still apply to uni; just not here. Which would be much more positive but still shows a loss of choice and opportunity)

To 2013, the proportion of scottish students from an SIMD40 background increase from 22.5% to 23.2%. That’s still a big underrepresentation- equality would be 40%- but a significant improvement. Equality is probably unachievable tbh simply because of the different educational outcomes. That figure also pre-dates the increase in funded places for SIMD students, which I’ll discuss in a moment.

Progression is another issue not mentioned; the number of students dropping out of university for financial reasons increased pretty steadily after the rise in tuition fees (again despite significant work to counter it), and fell for scottish students after the abolition. Sadly this gets ignored in most statistics but imo completion is a far more useful measure than enrolment. This stuff is full of hygiene factors and data issues though so probably hard to get really good stats out of it… Applications are a cleaner measure, just less useful.

The student finance point is an extremely complex one- while central government funding to students has fallen in real terms since the abolition of fees, that’s not the whole picture. Bearing in mind above all that the burden of cost on students fell massively.

One thing is, quite simply, most universities now have a stronger income from RUK and international students (despite the Home Office’s insane wrecking ball attempts to discourage international students). There’s just less need for central government funding to support basic services, and more capacity for the industry to support students rather than the government doing it directly. This stuff changes the whole picture.

The sfc unlocks unscheduled funding for additional places to SIMD students, I believe an extra 700 places last year. I suspect there’s other sources of indirect funding via leaps and the like which are missed in a similiar way.

Another big development is the increase in contextual admissions- one of the biggest issues with getting kids from deprived areas into uni is the academic one, the Scottish Government’s made some pretty significant moves in encouraging unis to compensate for this. Basically, we now have to take into account that a student from Govan High with B and Cs is a high achiever and probably a better academic performer than a kid from Jordanhill with straight As. That’s policy straight from the top, and IMO possibly more important than bags of money. And also, dammit, just the right thing to do whether or not it delivers 700 extra kids in uni.

There’s also far more work done with college articulation. I’m not clear if Prof Riddell’s report takes this into account, but I don’t think it does, it seems her statistics are based on normal applicants not direct. Considering that this is one of the best ways to widen access to university and helps many simd students and mature students, that’d be a big oversight.

I can’t comment on college funding in the same way, it’s outwith my field. I understand that the recent cuts in fe funding are actually smaller than the savings from the regionalisation of the scottish colleges though. If that’s correct then it’s an increase in funding to frontline services at the same time as a decrease in the cost to the taxpayer, which is kind of hard to criticise.

What I can say for sure is that fe in Scotland has changed a lot over the last few years so simple comparison of numbers isn’t going to be useful.

Oh, just to add (because obviously that post wasn’t long enough). I do think Scotland like the UK in general has the balance of FE and HE fundamentall wrong. But I don’t think there’s any political will anywhere in the UK to do anything about that, and frankly it’d be political suicide for the scottish government to rebalance education spending towards fe colleges, it’ll always be painted as taking away opportunity. But also, the UK outwith education also undervalues fe, so it’d take a lot more than funding to fix this, we need better colleges, more college places, possibly better college courses, and we need employers and applicants and parents to take colleges more seriously.

The recent changes in fe have been important though. My gut feeling is that we’re basically better at it than the rest of the UK though, the SQA kicks ass at fe, a curiously unsung scottish triumph that’s better known in China than in the UK

Getting close to the big day. Can I just say that I am getting nostalgic so THM, could you just type ” the truth is out there.” one last time for Ben and I? It is afterwards that will be interesting,the SNP will have to be used by Labour to get policy through..without looking like they are used by labour…It could also be amusing watching Cameron refuse to leave if he is within 15 seats of Labour! #SNPforCroydon. Those stats surprised me,I always thought it was a fairly affluent place. Oh and NW; I do a bit of work for the SQA,they sell their products to over 40 different countries…I am unimpressed with this and feel a verification team should be dispatched from the “old country” to ensure standards are being met in say,New Zealand?

Well I’m happy to not be there at the moment. Sounds like every outcome will disappoint a lot of people (being happy to not have a party in power doesn’t sound like a great outcome)
Con/Lab both want to push for complete victory, the rest want to declare their can’t do withouts, will be interesting to see what actually makes it to policy & is implemented.

Ed’s stone looks like a great wish list

1) Whatever he wants to define that as
2) one pound a year better off?
3) How much time?
4) Controls? Like a count at the gate?
etc etc.

Ed’s obelisk aside, he’s hated by Rupert Murdoch and the Daily Mail, so he’s probably alright