didn't the police ask for these anti-terrorism powers to allow them to do their jobs?

They did, but the Police have become increasingly political under Labour.

And the fact is, the Police will always ask for more powers in order to do their jobs – I'm sure detection rates would go through the roof if people were allowed to fall down the stairs, but they're not, and for good reasons.

I simply do not believe the terror threat exists at the level the government claims – events like the Mumbai attack have shown how much havoc a few well organised people can create, but they don't seem to be happening here. The vast majority of bombers we've seen here haven't even got the basic chemistry right.

But if we did, would it have saved lives?

I doubt it, they tried internment, found out that it didn't work, and possibly even increased terrorism, so they stopped it.

Granted the ex-USSR had a very strong line in repression, but I really can't see that right-wingers connect in any way either with civil liberties; eg Maggie and the miners/Irish/anyone who disagreed with her/support for the charming Mr Pinochet; George Bush and Guantanamo; Germany 1933-45 etc etc. I did rather assume that David Davis' resignation was some sort of barking publicity stunt that mis-fired; I don't see the Terrorism laws being relaxed any time soon!

The IRA were rather more successful at killing people than islamic extremists appear to be in the UK, but we didn't have anywhere near the level of infringement of civil liberties that we do now.

Nah, Shimano just flick a switch and the printer stops stamping out "Deore" and starts stamping out SLX.

Of course SLX are going to be better…

It's interesting to find that some americans class the UK as socialist.

American news (in particular, Fox) is literally unhinged. That's why they think that. Any policy which wouldn't be classed as rather right wing here is considered to be socialist or communism in the US.

There are career politicians in all the main parties.

Not something I dispute. They're all arseholes in the main.

Erm, that's how politics works. Anything else you'd like me to point out?

It may well be how politics works at present, but it's not how it should work. We elect these people to represent our interests, not their own. If we allow a small clique to govern for their benefit, and sit around going "Oh, that's politics, didn't you know? How gauche!" then we'll end up in the shit pretty damned quickly.

Anyone bothered that a right-wing government now has those terrifying powers?

I was more bothered when a left wing government had them. Most of the world's major internal surveillance systems have been the product of left wing systems – the Stasi, the NKVD etc. The left wing is inherently more interested in controlling and monitoring citizens in my book.

Given that both the Liberals and the Conservatives have strong civil liberties elements within their parties (remember David Davis resigning?), I hope we'll see the legislation toned down.

But this is politics after all and in the current situation it takes precedence over the economy.

The collection of arseholes (and I'm sure they are mostly arseholes, being that going through the Student Union Exec seems to be a prerequisite for any career in politics) are our servants.

They have no place trying to deliberately scupper things in the hope that they can have their jobs back in a few years.

KC is indeed very pro europe, but I think he's old enough now to know when to keep his mouth shut.

The other one has no experience at all.

Cable's got a Phd in Economics, and was chief economist at Shell. I'd hardly call that no experience at all.

Hell, it's rather more qualification than any chancellor I can remember.

Cameron as PM? Superb news. Whether in a coalition with the libdems(which will destroy their party if they do) or as a minority Government, they are compromised and virtually powerless in parliament.

A masterstroke by Labour.

That's a somewhat perverse position to take. We need the government to sort out the economy and make the cuts that need to be made. If the government can't, yes, it will reflect badly on whoever's in power, but it will also mean genuine problems for everyone in the UK.

To me, that's rather more important than party politics.

The bloke with the glasses has just said that Ken Clarke may become chancellor, with Vince Cable as second in command.

That would be absolutely fantastic in my book. Two experienced people with fairly sane views.

I find that lefties are disproportionately vocal, and incredibly committed. I'm tossing time away this afternoon, so I'm quite happy to sit and argue with people who are coming out with reheated rubbish from Ben Elton's 1987 act. Most of the time I have things to do, so it's far easier to just let people ramble on about Thatcher, top hats and monocles, rather than disagree and get 6 irate responses in 5 minutes.

This was done to death the other day.

Cardiotrainer.

I did really well, So did my friends.

There are some good comps. Unfortunately there are a hell of a lot of bad ones.

Conservatism goes hand in hand with capitalism so by default i'm not a Tory.

If you're not a capitalist – ie, you don't believe in the exchange of cash for goods and labour, have you ever considered somewhere more aligned with your views? Say, Cuba or North Korea? 😀

Or do you mean you are a capitalist, but you don't subscribe to the "market is king" Neocon outlook?

My personal experience of comprehensive education is similar to others – taught not quite to the LCD. We had kids at GCSE age who could barely read and write, who'd been left behind long ago, along with kids who didn't need to do any work to pass with good grades. Both ends of the spectrum were being failed.

I'm currently at a good uni (having done an undergrad at a rather less good uni) and the most startling thing to me is how different the intake is. At my old Uni, I knew of one person who went to private school, with almost all my peers being ex comp students. At my current Uni, it's rare to meet someone who didn't go to private or grammar school.

It's pretty damn clear to me that there's an educational apartheid in this country based solely on whether or not you can afford private education or a house in a grammar catchment. If you can't, then tough luck. The only way I can see out of this is to have more grammar schools, or something very similar, because personal experience tells me that comps don't work.

I don't hear them saying that TJ. I don't hear any of this "tax the rich, give to the poor" business outside of the Socialist Worker.

Of course, tax credits are a great success. It's not as if any of the poorest in society have been reduced to tears by incredibly arcane forms and the prospect of being asked to give back money they haven't got, after all.

Ultimately, that's the key dividing line between the parties for me.

Labour want to take your money from you, skim a bit off, and give you some back, so that you're reliant on them. At the extreme end of the spectrum, they create areas with massive numbers of public jobs, virtually guaranteeing themselves votes.

The Lib Dems and the Conservatives realise it's actually more productive just to let you keep it in the first place.

JESUS H CHRIST! I don't believe that ANYBODY in mainstream politics today actually wants to redistribute wealth!

My value of mainstream does not include the likes of Dennis Skinner, for example.

On the plus side, after 6 months I can work for competitors and customers of my previous employer which might make things easier.

Just do it ASAP. Those clauses are completely unenforceable unless you actaully steal company data (ie, contact lists).

Do you think a widening gap between rich and poor is a good thing?

No, which is why I think we should have grammar schools, incentives to work (ie, lower tax for low paid workers, a functioning benefits system) and a proper implementation of SureStart (highly focussed intervention for the families who NEED help bringing up their children), rather than the half arsed sop to the middle classes that it currently is. If you look at social mobility in historical terms, grammar schools made a huge difference.

I've been unemployed myself, and I know people who have been long term unemployed, and the current system is just not helpful in getting people back into work. It actually encourages benefit dependency, which of course means that people get left behind.

As I said before, the richest simply do not pay a great deal of IHT at the moment. And don't forget that the IHT cut is paid for by levying non-doms.

And really, nobody seriously thinks they are going to redistribute wealth in this day and age. Not in the leftist class war sense.

Perhaps you are now suggesting the Tories belief in redistributing wealth via taxation and helping the poor rather than business?

I don't think anyone in mainstream politics seriously believes we can redistribute wealth via taxation. The moderately & very rich simply will not pay punitive taxes. Certainly a lot of people were paid 2 or 3 years wages in advance as soon as the 50% tax rate was on its way. The only way to collect tax from the very rich is to have a simple tax code (so they can't wriggle out of paying it) and charge reasonable rates of tax.

The fact is that most rich people are like the rest of us – their kids are settled in school, they quite like Britain, and they have friends and family here. They will leave if you charge horrendous rates of tax, but will equally stand reasonable amounts of tax and stick around. It's a case of deciding if you want to have chicken for tea tonight, or eggs for the forseeable future.

As for inheritance tax, it is really a tax break for the moderately well off. The real rich find ways around it.

ok but they both describe themselves as left of centre and the tories describe themselves as right of centre so take it up with them.

D you really want to try and claim that the liberal tax policies are similiar to the Tories …you cannot be serious…they are more left wing, redistributive and higher taxing for the rich than are labour. The tories and labour are closer together on taxation than the libs and the Tories. Sil

I do. The Lib Dems and Tories are on the same kind of wavelength – reducing tax for the poorest, simplifying taxation and giving people personal freedoms.

Labour, on the other hand, are all about benefits and tax credits – and there's a good reason for that – a great deal of benefits go unclaimed (15-23% in 2009), so it's very easy to say "I'm making XYZ groups better off, giving them £PRQ billion" without actually having to fork out £PRQ billion. The most infuriating thing is that every hardcore lefty knows this, which is why they always used to fight for non-means tested benefits.

There's a big difference in the end result and the intention.

plus possibly scrapping/reducing the minimum wage?

True but again, I think that's exactly the kind of thing that would stand a good chance of breaking up a ConLib coalition.

From the Conservative Manifesto:

We need to make work pay, so we will keep the minimum wage and work to reduce the very high marginal tax rates faced by many people on low incomes who want to return to work or increase their earnings.

we can no longer justify paying tax credits to households earning more than £50,000.

raise the stamp duty threshold to £250,000 for first-time buyers, meaning nine out of ten of them will pay no tax on their first home purchase.

cut government contributions to Child Trust Funds for all but the poorest third of families and families with disabled children

Seven out of ten working people – those earning between £7,100 and £45,400 – and almost every employer will save up to £150 a year per person compared to under Labour. Lower earners will get the greatest benefit as a percentage of their earnings.

Look at the horrible toffs, just queuing up to give tax breaks to those on low income, and decrease handouts to the well off.

I sometimes wonder if people recieve party's policies via some kind of ethereal message from the spirit world – they certainly don't seem to read the manifestos or listen to what the politicians are saying.

Edit: Doublepost.

the fact that lib and labour are both left of centre and are more similiar to eah other than they are to the Tories.

I don't view the Left / Right metaphor as helpful at all. We have Labour talking about a nation of shareholders in their manifesto!

As an example, this is the first of 4 key policies mentioned in the Lib Dem manifesto:
First £10k of earnings is to be tax free, and the closure of tax loopholes. Not at all dissimilar to Flat Tax which has been discussed by the more progressive elements of the Tory party but is absolute anathema to Labour, who like to offer centrally controlled tax credits.

Magura are very good brake too. I've had Julies for years, always been super reliable, even on long descents with me weighing in at 15-16 stone kitted up.

I often ask people what they think about these significant political moves, only to be met with blank stares, or no opinion.

Bang on. The fact is that we are moving at such a pace, that it's difficult for the politicians to understand the legislation they're passing, let alone us.

And certainly it's difficult to comprehend how politicians and the media stuff us without a basic understanding of ideas like narrative, which are really only taught in some degree courses, and mentioned very sparsley in mainstream media (Newswipe is the only example I can think of), and are therefore out of reach for most of the population.

Seems like a fairly standard attiude to road accidents in my view. I once witnessed an accident that left a driver in an extremely bad way, brain damaged etc.

The bloke who'd driven into him had a good quarter of a mile, or around 15-20 seconds to see him. Obviously, he wasn't paying attention.

When I was giving my statement, one of the policemen said something along the lines of "We all do it occasionally" when I mentioned that he must have not been paying attention.

I'd personally like to see much harsher treatment for bad driving in general. I really don't see why driving when extremely tired or whilst distracted is more socially acceptable than driving drunk, particularly when tiredness has been proven to be as bad as drink for your cognitive abilities.

I know that the outcome of this election isn't popular at STW, mainly because the demographic on here is not representative of the UK

Ding! According to Mintel, we're mainly ABC1s who read the Guardian, educated to degree level.

I can believe the bit about the Guardian, not so sure about the degrees 😀

And unless there is some complicated way, you'd lose that idea that an MP represents your area (however naive that is anyway…).

My MP certainly represents my area. His political views are about as far from mine as possible on a lot of things, but he works damned hard for his constituents.

Campag gear is the best, because it's the prettiest. The end.

They would have a majority – labour, Lib dems, nationalists gives a majority

Sorry, you're right. Labour + Liberals doesn't give a majority, so they are reliant on the nationalists. They're still in the position of having things dictated to them by the nationalists, and creating a demand for an English parliament.

I would guess that knife sales aren't expected to do brilliantly. The Leatherman & Gerber type things have more features, and at the same time, knives are becoming more and more unacceptable.

I just don't get it. I don't see why I'd want it, over say, watching Seasons on DVD.

I think it's a horribly small market segment – roadies tend to use turbo trainers, only about 5% of cyclists own a road bike, and maybe 60% of the road bikes out there are either unused or old 10 speeds from back in the day, used for getting from A to B.

So you're looking at perhaps 1-2% of the cycling market who are serious roadies. I would guess that half of them use turbo trainers if you're lucky. So 0.5-1% of the cycling market.

You are then looking at how many people use a turbo trainer and will want to use your product. Some will already have the fancy video racing systems, some will just have the radio on, some will be happy watching the Corrie omnibus.

A new product is lucky to get 1% of the market. 1% of 0.5-1% is not a lot.

I may of course, be wrong, but I've just written a business plan for a cycling product, and read far too much market research – there are only a few assumptions in the above – how many of those who own road bikes are serious roadies, that people who own turbo trainers also own road bikes, and that half of roadies might have turbo trainers.

The commuting / casual leisure market is the big one.

Are you seeing a link I'm missing?! Knives. Perfume.

Knives, gifty stuff (ie, those utility credit cards), already got the right distribution channels in place – airport departure lounge shops etc…

There's no logical leap from knives to perfume, but look at their entire range and where they sell it, their image etc. and it begins to fall into place.

I think the a ConLib coalition could work. If the Tories whipped well and got a few votes from the Lib Dems, they could get legislation through parliament fairly happily.

A LabLibOthers coalition would have to agree on everything, and make big concessions to minority parties. They'd not have a majority if they whipped everyone in their coalition, so they'd be relying on Tory votes to pass legislation. Given that they're likely to be forced into stupid things by the various Nationalist parties involved – cuts for England but not the rest of the UK, I can see that being very problematic for them.

Ultimately I think a LibLab coalition will create a strong public demand for electoral reform, but I'm not sure it'll be the gerrymandered UK wide PR that the LibLab bunch are hoping will keep the Tories out for all time. I think people will get seriously angry and start pushing for an English parliament, which if anything, would guarantee a series of Conservative governments.

The key thing is that this isn't a complicated issue – Scottish and Welsh MPs can vote for things that hurt English voters whilst protecting their own. That is a message that can be understood by the vast majority of people, very quickly, whereas PR is not.

Demos, riots, overturned cars in the streets, many more homeless, infrastructure decay, a rise in crimes against the person and property, a happy time perhaps for the City and the secure middle classes, a dreadful time for the vulnerable, the disabled, the physically and mentally ill, the homeless and the poor.

I'm amazed how popular this narrative is (hell, I'm impressed by how skilled Labour are at using narrative in general – the time spent studying postmodernism obviously paid off), that as soon as the Tories get in, they start spitting on plebs and create a virtual civil war, whilst under Labour, everything is hunky dory.

We've seen the police killing and beating people at demonstrations, our economy implode, a huge rise in crimes against the person (mainly because people carry more high value items, and cars are more difficult to steal) which hasn't been dealt with, local councils spying on people, and a huge amount of racial / religious tension whipped up by overblown claims about the threat of terrorism.

But of course, the Tories are the nasty party and Labour are lovely.

I test rode a dual control bike, and it was horrible. Not my cup of tea at all.