Current Affairs The General Election

[peteblue]

Well that's true... It's just unfortunate for Brown that a lot of his reforms as chancellor had left Britain less well prepared than it's European neighbours for the recession. I think Darling made a key error in buying out the banks rather than just guaranteeing deposits and letting them fail, but given we were potentially hours away from people not being able to get at their own money and runs on them, I can't hold that against him too much.

The fact that as a country Britain learned absolutely nothing from this is the real tragedy, however.

I agree, especially with the learnt lessons bit, but the U.K. growth after 2009 matched that of Germany according to the world bank. The U.K. had to put its finances straight.

 

[peteblue]

Whilst I do rate Starmer as a politician, I recall his visit to Carlisle's CPS offices when he was the Director of that service... A memo was circulated to all staff a week before the visit instructing them that they were only to address the Director if spoken to and were not to ask anything only provide answers and that he must be addressed as "Director" at all times.

Which kind of makes me believe he is excactly the sort of person who rises to become PM.

Of somewhere like Russia ?....

 

[Jebus_lives]

Of somewhere like Russia ?....

He strikes me as the sort of man that would want to shut down a sovereign parliament and then create a narrative of democratically elected representatives as 'enemies of the people'.

Indeed I imagine he might be the sort of man to put his unelected shadowy, formerly Russian resident, special advisor in a position of extreme power, then suppress a report about Russian interference into UK democratic process.

 

[catcherintherye]

I remember reading this little summary about his time in the CPS which I thought said it all....

Decided not to prosecute John Worboys for 75 sex assaults
Yet spent four years failing to prosecute 23 journalists

Insisted on prosecuting Paul Chambers for making a light-hearted joke on social media (the infamous Twitter joke trial)

Failed to build a case against Jimmy Savile and forced to apologise after being damned by report into failings

Repeatedly championed the innocence of convicted murderer who later admitted that he was actually guilty

Failed to prosecute police officer who killed newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson

Ordered the CPS in Wales to drop the prosecution of a primary school teacher who had been accused of sexting a 16 year old boy, who went on to commit suicide

Damning report into Starmer’s tenure at the CPS showed it was performing well below the necessary standard, with the report attributing part of the blame to a ‘overload of initiatives’ from the CPS’ national leadership

Survey of CPS staff found that just 12% of them thought that the organisation was being well managed under Starmer’s leadership

Accused of reopening a spurious sex abuse case involving a friend of Tom Watson – the accused was cleared in an hour

Chose not to prosecute two doctors accused of carrying out abortions on grounds of gender

He was probably involved in hundreds of cases and there are certainly mistakes. The CPS around rape is appalling (and has actually got worse since he left).

He clearly has top level experience though in a high pressure job. He would seem a lot more qualified to me to lead a party on the back of that.

 

[catcherintherye]

Whilst I do rate Starmer as a politician, I recall his visit to Carlisle's CPS offices when he was the Director of that service... A memo was circulated to all staff a week before the visit instructing them that they were only to address the Director if spoken to and were not to ask anything only provide answers and that he must be addressed as "Director" at all times.

Which kind of makes me believe he is excactly the sort of person who rises to become PM.

Thats interesting. He has said elsewhere he hated being called a director or Sir.

 

[davids]

 

[Disgruntledgoat]

Thats interesting. He has said elsewhere he hated being called a director or Sir.

Politician in lying to look more in touch shocker.

My brother was in the office. I'll ask if he still has the memo.

 

[catcherintherye]

Don’t forget the financial incompetence from the previous government that drove all this.....

How did the financial crash cause austerity Pete? Run this one by me.

A crash that originated in the financial sector, that led to record debts being transferred to the government caused the poorest in society to pay the price because the debt figure was too high.Now with that debt figure over double the number in 2010 we actually don't need to make cuts, we can borrow tens of billions to spend according to Javid.

Pander me a little, if I were thinking of voting Tory, but said I can make no sense of that reasoning, could you suggest anything that could my mind at ease? I try to be objective as possible, but I can't make any sense of the Conservative fiscal policy. I'm open to conversion.

 

[catcherintherye]

Politician in lying to look more in touch shocker.

My brother was in the office. I'll ask if he still has the memo.

Thats really interesting. I don't doubt your view, it seems there is some inconsistency of how he views himself!

 

[Disgruntledgoat]

Thats really interesting. I don't doubt your view, it seems there is some inconsistency of how he views himself!

Was an odd time that.. I had Brown, Blair and Mandleson through my place of work at Sellafield in the space of a few years.

Brown had one of his reverse midas moments when we discovered a massive leak in a plant the day he showed up.

 

[spectateur]

<thumps head off desk>

He's pissed!

 

[spectateur]

All down to the marginals and not so marginal as per usual

That is the big problem with the UK voting system of FPTP. It leaves milllions and millions of people without representation. Until we have a more democratic method of electing our MPs we will continue to have a rubbish government.

 

[degsy]

That is the big problem with the UK voting system of FPTP. It leaves milllions and millions of people without representation. Until we have a more democratic method of electing our MPs we will continue to have a rubbish government.

The one doesn't follow the other. We've had prop. rep. in australia and we've had endless rubbish governments

 

[Blue 1]

Didn't end well for Zed though, did it?

 

[catcherintherye]

A bit of an apology for a post with a bit of numbers/data.

I’ve had a little look at Gedling and other marginal numbers. For Tories I’d be quite worried. If you take Gedling for example, if you take electoral calculus they estimate on an 11% advantage they are predicted to translate that into a 2.5% win. Yet according to polling they are behind by 5%

https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/homepage.html

https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/cgi-bin/seatdetails.py?seat=Gedling



The conclusions that are to be drawn are either the headline voting intention is wrong or that the Conservatives are just not translating equally in marginal seats.

Gedling is an archetypal seat for them to potentially win. It’s leave (60%) it’s midlands (not the north so more susceptible) and only seat number 43 of their Labour target Seats (bear in mind a number of those seats are in Remain areas so unlikely to go to Tories at all).

The Conservatives needs 27 seats to win a majority. If they are not ahead in Gedling, and fairly convincingly ahead at that there are serious questions that they will be converting big poll leads to a majority.

Worryingly this is all with a poll lead sitting at 11%. What that hints at is a 2% swing from Lab-Con currently. If Labour were to get within 7% of the Cons in terms of National voter intention we may be at the sweet point whereby Labour start to win seats back from the Cons in the North.

I won’t go into enormous detail for the seats in the south, but a similar pattern is seen there. Esher and Wokingham are now very close to swinging to the Liberal Democrats. Esher is target number 46 and Wokingham number 44 on their list. So likewise is the Liberal Democrats look set to win around 40 ish seats with the Polls so far apart is something of a disaster for the Cons.

They look set to lose around 10 seats in Scotland add to 40 from the Lib Dems and again it starts to become hard to see any way to power for them. They would need to be looking at 80+ from Labour.

I think the nightmare scenario for the Tories, that the Liberal Democrats win seats in the south and Labour hold votes in the North could be beginning to emerge. I’ll certainly be watching the trends as they continue.