If You Were In The Uk Electorate

[Speckled Frost]

Apparently the bookies have Labour at 12-1 ON

 

They rarely get such things wrong.

 

The election will be about personalities as much as policies.

 

Michael Howard is a vampire, Kennedy is just a nice bloke while Blair, for all the distrust, still remains the only feasible figure head.

[hollandaise]

Michael Howard is a vampire, Kennedy is just a nice bloke while Blair, for all the distrust, still remains the only feasible figure head.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Scarily, I fear you may be right.

[rallybug]

I sometimes can't get my head around people who are voting for Howard or Blair or whichever leader - all that means is you're voting in what could be a complete numbskull as your local MP, just because you want 'your' party in power.

 

Was different for me I suppose, growing up in Yeovil - local MP was Paddy Ashdown and, of course, he was the Lib Dems leader too. I voted for him based on what he'd done for Yeovil though, and not on the fact that he was leader of the party.

 

Mind you, the last general election I could vote in in the UK before I moved over here, I voted Referendum

 

I don't even have any idea who my home town MP is now, so don't know if I'd vote for him or not, but I would be voting for the MP, not the party.

 

There's things about each major party that I have issues with, especially the pro-Europe factions - I'm not against the UK being in the EU, but wish some of the other countries would actually act according to the EU laws etc, like the UK does (witness France and Germany being allowed to break the EuroZone rules etc).

[simon]

Mind you, the last general election I could vote in in the UK before I moved over here, I voted Referendum

 

At the time (1997 was the only General Election which Goldsmith's Referendum Party fought) I was living in Putney where the late Sir James was standing. The Referendum Party workers were all a bit like Tim Nice But Dim (rugger shirts and loud hailers).

 

Sir James came to look increasingly like Mr Burns IMO.

 

[Dave the Cardboard Box]

If Gordon Brown was leading the Labour Party - they would get back in with a majority around 150, not far off where they are now.

 

 

With Blair in charge, with the millstone of Iraq around his neck, the Labour vote is in meltdown and he will be fortunate to have a 15 seat majority.

 

Robin Cook is the boy. He could make or break their chances with a few well chosen words.

[Speckled Frost]

Robin Cook is the boy. He could make or break their chances with a few well chosen words.

 

Ooh, he could be the next Geoffrey Howe

[P.K.]

The Conservatives, by demonstrating an understanding that it is essential that a healthy economy is in place before anything else is affordable and sustainable, seem to me to be the only possible choice.

 

NuLabour have squandered the wealth that they inherited in 1997

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Are you serious? Thatchers policies left Britain in the best shape it had been in for a long time. They handed Britain over to Labour in excellent economic health.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well, not quite.

 

The inheritor of Margaret Thatcher's legacy was not Labour but one John Major. When Chancellor he made the incredibly stupid decision in October 1990 to go into the ERM. Basically the economy they had was far too weak, inflation was running away, interest rates were rising to 14 - 15% (the housing market spectacularly crashed shortly after) and the economy was going over a cliff. Then Prime Minister with Lamont as Chancellor they heralded in Black Wednesday that cost billions and blew the UK out of the ERM.

 

Excellent economic health? I don't think so....

 

The best thing to have been done to the economy in the last few decades was handing control of interest rates over to the Bank Of England.

[Fatty Fatty Toad Boy]

I've heard it said that it takes 10 years for the policies of a Government to take effect. Labour were elected in 1997.

[P.K.]

I've heard it said by a lecturer in Politics, Economics and Sociology that the "10 years to take effect" syndrome is completely erroneous.

 

Nudging up interest rates has already cooled a runaway UK housing market. So I am particularly glad that interest rates are no longer the political football they once were. Boom - Election - Recession - Boom - Election - Recession was terribly damaging. For the last few years the forecasts by Mr Brown and the Treasury have been highly accurate, despite all their detractors. It almost looks like they know what they are doing. Scary.

 

-

[Declan]

With Blair in charge, with the millstone of Iraq around his neck, the Labour vote is in meltdown and he will be fortunate to have a 15 seat majority.

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

In some ways that is the best of all the feasable outcomes. Ideally, with Brown as PM soon and a greatly increased Lib Dem presence.

 

I'm glad I'm not voting, I'd feel guilty jepondising the situation P.K. has explained, but I'd feel guilty voting Labour for Monkey_Magic's point ...

 

Lying about going to war is as bad as it gets, but Labour will probably get back in regardless. Crazy.

 

Also, I'm not convinced Labour's target culture is that healthy and some of them (Milburn, Clarke, Reid) are showing signs of the arrogance of Major's last days.

 

So I'd be quite happy for them to be returned bloody-nosed, and needing to take more notice of Parliament.

[Rog]

I was amused at the so accurate observation in The Barry Beelzebub item describing how Bleah improves his chances ---

 

"One: Create 800,000 unnecessary and useless public sector jobs for ideological placemen, who then have to vote NuLabour if they want to continue putting a lentil-based Delia on the dinner table every night.

 

Two: Pay for these apparatchiks by introducing hundreds of new stealth taxes. No-one will notice as long as income tax stays at the same level. Well, not in the next month or so anyway.

 

Three: If a TV chef gets awkward, find a few hundred million pounds and the promise of a knighthood to make him go away. Remember, you had always planned to stop schools feeding kids a diet of Turkey Twizzlers and lard. The timing was just coincidental, honest.

 

Four: Never mind taking on John Simpson on Today or Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight. A gentle run out with Little Ant and Dec is sufficient to get your key points over to the Great Unwashed Public without being asked any difficult questions.

 

Five: Go to the Pope's funeral. Never mind that there is no protocol for a British Prime Minister attending in the past. There are votes aplenty in a carefully tearful eye amongst those Bells and Smells.

 

Six: If necessary, cheat. Introduce a postal voting system that is wide open to fraud. Have your supporters go door-to-door, particularly in ethnic areas, collecting the forms before filling them in at their leisure. Intimidate postmen into handing over whole bags of blank forms before filling them in at your leisure. Intercept completed votes and change them in your favour. Ignore a top QC who describes postal voting as "an electoral fraud that would disgrace a banana republic."

 

Click the link for this weeks full 'Barry' item.

[simon]

So I'd be quite happy for them to be returned bloody-nosed, and needing to take more notice of Parliament

 

I hope that not too many people vote for the bloody nose option.

A vote for anything other than Labour is, effectively, a vote for Michael Howard.

 

Posh people vote Liberal. Taxi drivers and people with stone cladding vote Conservative.

[P.K.]

Six: If necessary, cheat. Introduce a postal voting system that is wide open to fraud. Have your supporters go door-to-door, particularly in ethnic areas, collecting the forms before filling them in at their leisure. Intimidate postmen into handing over whole bags of blank forms before filling them in at your leisure. Intercept completed votes and change them in your favour. Ignore a top QC who describes postal voting as "an electoral fraud that would disgrace a banana republic."

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

This story relates to some local councillors from a local election in June 2004 - not exactly current. Dragged up by The Daily Mail - amazing!

 

The full story http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,19...1555750,00.html is quite interesting if only that one mentioned is called Shah Jahan. He married Mumtaz, had 14 children, was imprisoned in the Red Fort, built the Taj Mahal and was eventually interred inside. Well, the original Shah Jahan was anyway. I just thought you'd like to know that.

[Rog]

This story relates to some local councillors from a local election in June 2004 - not exactly current. Dragged up by The Daily Mail - amazing!

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Not old news at all.

 

The story relates to the findings of an electoral court held 04/04/05. that examined the matter.

 

"Judge lambasts postal ballot rules as Labour 6 convicted of poll fraud

 

By Nick Britten and George Jones

(Filed: 05/04/2005)

 

A judge launched a blistering attack on the postal voting system yesterday and the Government's failure to recognise and tackle widespread corruption.

 

Finding six Labour councillors guilty of electoral fraud at last year's council election in two Birmingham wards, he said the episode would "disgrace a banana republic".

 

The whole story HERE

[P.K.]

Errrr... I obviously did not make it clear. When I said not exactly current I meant the election they were reporting on, not the news article. The date of the piece I posted was 05/04/2005 - last Tuesday.

 

Incidentally, I would trust The Times for more balance than The Torygraph about now. Papers like the Mail, Express and Torygraph have editors who will tell you that Ghengis Khan was a left-wing visionary who brought in much needed reforms.