UK election 101

[Gob]

The Green Party today demanded an end austerity with a radical £176 billion a year spending splurge - paying for everything from free prescriptions to organic school dinners for all.

State pensions would be increased by more than £60 a week, child benefit doubled, tuition fees scrapped and train fares cut by 10 per cent. The party also pledged to pump an extra £12billion a year into the NHS from day one, introduce universal free elderly care and nationalise the railways.

But its election manifesto also revealed a host of left-field pledges - including a 'complete ban' on cages for hens and rabbits, an end to whips in horse racing and mandatory 'equality and diversity lessons' at school.

Immigrants will also be given free English classes, while fruit and vegetables will be subsidised and children will be kept out of school until they are seven. Green Party leader Natalie Bennett, unveiling her party's manifesto this morning, defended her 'vision of a fair economy'. She said: 'That fair economy demands the end to austerity. It demands we restore and enhance the essential public services we all but particularly the most vulnerable.'

Ms Bennett's list of policy pledges will see government spending rise by £89 billion next year - and by £176billion by the end of the parliament. The extra spending would see an extra £11 billion going on debt interest.

Under the party's proposal, an extra £198 billion of taxes will be introduced to pay for the raft of giveaways – worth an extra £6,600 for every taxpayer in the UK.

k

[Gob]

Election 2015: The 15 worst sentences from the Labour Party manifesto

Vacuous, woolly, worthy, patronising, or just downright odd: the most excruciating examples of jargon-filled guff in Ed Miliband’s 84-page vision for Britain


“The common life we share is who we are as a country.” (page 11)

“We will create a whole-person approach.” (page 34)

“Labour recognises the vital importance of the power of people’s relationships to build the capacity for love, care and resilience.” (page 44)

“We need a change in how we design our public services by pushing power down.” (page 32)

“We will support this model of knowledge clusters.” (page 21)

“We guarantee a universal entitlement to a creative education so that every young person has access to cultural activity.” (page 55)

“Labour has always believed that everyone should have access to nature, whoever they are.” (page 56)

“One of our first acts in government will be to conduct a wide-ranging review of Britain’s place in the world.” (page 74)

“We applaud those faith communities who have pioneered an inter-faith dialogue for the common good.” (page 54)

“In a globalised world, our local environment provides us with a sense of place and belonging.” (page 56)

“For our country to stay strong, with the confidence to look outwards rather than inwards, people need to feel secure in the strength of our borders, our communities, and in the workplace.” (page 49)

“Labour believes that art and culture gives form to our hopes and aspirations and defines our heritage as a nation.” (page 54)

“This will be underpinned by a new National Primary Childcare Service, a not-for-profit organisation to promote the voluntary and charitable delivery of quality extracurricular activities.” (page 44)

“Sport brings us together in an expression of our local and national pride.” (page 55)

“We will take a whole-family approach to policy-making.” (page 45)

[Gob]

Hmmmm.. What was I saying about immigration....

[Gob]

Fleet (United Kingdom) (AFP) - There's something about a British general election that brings out oddballs, loons and eccentric buffoons who dream of making it to parliament.



In the run-up to polling day on May 7, Britain's stuffy politicians are sharing the hustings with quirky candidates poking fun at the whole election ritual.

And in a campaign derided as flat and stage-managed, the new arrivals are bringing some much-needed merriment to proceedings.

The torchbearers for electoral eccentricity are the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, which has been blowing raspberries at politics for decades.

Their leader, Alan "Howling Laud" Hope, dresses in a white suit and stetson, complete with a ludicrous giant rosette and a leopard-print bow tie.

The Loony "manicfesto" includes pledges to put air conditioning on the outside of buildings to deal with global warming and fit airbags to the stock exchange ready for the next crash.

But some of their policies, once derided as bonkers, have actually been enacted, such as passports for pets, 24-hour pubs and honours for The Beatles.

"Our main policy is: we promise we shall do all the things the other parties say they're going to do when they don't do it," Hope told AFP at his local pub in Fleet, southwest of London.

"We've seen it all before, heard it all before, and still don't believe it."

Hope is standing against bumbling London Mayor Boris Johnson in the west London seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip, and hopes voters will have trouble picking out the official Loony.

"General elections are good fun. When we turn up, they say, jolly good job you're here, at least it won't be so boring," he said, sipping a pint of Loony "Winning Co-ALE-ition" beer.

"We're just poking a bit of sensible fun at politics," said the 72-year-old, one of 16 Loonies standing.

"If we just got 2,000 or 3,000 votes, wouldn't it make the other parties sit up and think, where on Earth are we going wrong?

"That not loony, is it? Or is it?"

- Flatulent superhero sniffs opportunity -



Meanwhile in Aberavon in south Wales, Captain Beany -- once voted the Great British Eccentric of the year -- is out to cause a shock upset.

Local charity fundraiser Barry Kirk, 60, is a man-sized baked bean: the tinned haricot beans in tomato sauce beloved by Britons famed for inducing flatulence.

He has spent 25 years unsuccessfully standing for election in his Captain Beany superhero costume and nuclear-orange facepaint.

This time round he has switched the caped crusader look for a tangerine-coloured smart suit to strike a more serious tone.

He is standing against Stephen Kinnock -- son of 1980s Labour leader Neil Kinnock and husband of Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt -- who has been parachuted into the safe Labour seat.

"It is a slap in the face to all the local population," Beany told AFP.

"People say to me at least you are local, have done your bit for this town, why should we vote for this interloper?"

Beany and Kinnock have crossed paths out campaigning.

"What a bore! If you went into a furniture showroom he's quite plausible for that. He's totally bland," he said, howling with laughter.

Beany reckons his new look and serious approach to representing his struggling steelworks town is attracting more voters.

"Politicians promise the world and don't come up with the goods," he said.

"I've got one policy: if you've got any issues, come to see me and I promise if I can do something for you, I'll try my hardest to do it.

"Can you imagine an orange man on the backbenches? That would be awesome!"

Elsewhere, some well-known but rather unusual candidates are hoping to shake up parliament.

Mark "Bez" Berry, the dancer-maracas shaker in the alternative rock band Happy Mondays, has formed the Reality Party, an anti-austerity, anti-fracking movement.

He is standing in Salford and Eccles in Manchester, northwest England, proclaiming: "Shake your maracas if you're against the frackers."

Comedian Al Murray is standing in South Thanet, southeast England, against Nigel Farage, leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party.

Murray is running as his character The Pub Landlord -- a patriotic, xenophobic, reactionary publican.

"It seems to me that the UK is ready for a bloke waving a pint around, offering common sense solutions," Murray said, the whole effort mocking Farage's approach.

[Gob]

British voters show how to give politicians a roasting



LONDON — Britain’s parliamentary Question Time is famous for its rhetorical jousting, but on Thursday night an audience of ordinary citizens in Leeds, England, showed that they are the equal of professional politicians at putting their leaders on the spot — and even more genuinely passionate about their frustrations.

One after another, the leaders of the three main parties came onto the stage in Leeds. They left after half an hour of give-and-take, having been roasted by relentless questions and expressions of disbelief from the audience. If anyone needed a clear expression of voters’ lack of confidence in their political leaders, it was there for all to see.

This was the kind of encounter that is almost never seen in U.S. politics. Politicians may do town hall meetings or take questions in coffee shops or living rooms in Iowa or New Hampshire. Occasionally someone throws a tough question, but voters are generally polite and rarely too pointed. American politicians would be stunned by the style of voters in Britain.

The three — Prime Minister David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader; Ed Miliband, the Labor Party leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat Party leader — rarely got a respite from the pounding, and though each fought back in his own defense, their answers most of the time seemed not to satisfy their skeptical questioners.

Given what happened, it’s much clearer why neither of the country’s two main parties —the Tories and Labor — is likely to win enough votes to claim a majority in the House of Commons after next week’s elections. As in the United States, public cynicism is high, and there’s little the politicians can say right now to persuade people otherwise.

This was the last major televised event before those elections. Both Cameron and Miliband, one of whom will try to form the next government (perhaps both will have a go at it before someone succeeds), had urgent missions for the evening. But they were hard pressed to stay focused on the messages they wanted to deliver as they were rocked by scathing questioning that began or ended with “how can we trust you?”


The BBC’s David Dimbleby, who moderated the 90-minute special, had promised to give the power to the voters, and he was true to his word. He followed up at times with piercing questions of his own but let the audience take the lead. The event featured neither opening nor closing statements. The leaders walked out and immediately took it on the chin. Perhaps it was choreographed that way out of fairness: Nobody would get a pass right from the start.

The event covered a range of policies: spending and taxes, education, welfare and housing, immigration and the future of Britain in Europe. It added up to a long litany of what the audience saw as a succession of broken promises. Whatever assurances the leaders tried to offer met with skeptical and occasionally hostile pushback. The voters were not shy about interrupting the politicians when they didn’t like what they heard.

It was no wonder that the members of the audience came away with some sense that they were being dealt with straight away by the leaders. Every poll here indicates the next government, like the current one, will be formed as some kind of partnership or understanding between one of the two major parties and some combination of other parties. But neither Miliband nor Cameron would engage in any discussion about it. Each insisted he hopes to win a majority next week, which did nothing to enhance the credibility of either man.

Miliband didn’t want to talk about the kind of government he would try to lead, because to do so Labor will need support from the Scottish National Party, which is loathed by many voters in England for its desire to sever ties with the United Kingdom. He ruled out in stronger terms than ever any kind of coalition or deal.

Cameron didn’t want to talk coalitions, though it was his boldness five years ago after a hung Parliament that brought the Liberal Democrats into government with the Conservatives. He needs every possible seat, even if short of a majority, in order to stay in power and can’t afford any bleeding away of the Tories’ strength in the Commons.

Clegg was honest enough to say there will be some kind of multiparty arrangement in the next government, but after the battering his party has taken as a result of his decision to accept Cameron’s offer five years ago, he wanted to set conditions of his own.

What came clear from the questions, beyond the voters’ lack of confidence, was the sense of government not in control.

The British economy has recovered from the worst of the financial crisis, but outside London the effects are not being felt. That’s causing problems for Cameron and the Tories. Voters also fear that government spends too much, that the last Labor government was undisciplined and overspent, and that Miliband would be a poor steward of the country’s fiscal future.

On immigration, neither party has a record or plan that satisfies, which has given rise to the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), whose strength now threatens the Conservatives.

That has left things unsettled with just a week of campaigning ahead, and Thursday’s televised forum made clear that it won’t be easy to change minds in those few days remaining.

Dan Balz is Chief Correspondent at The Washington Post. He has served as the paper’s National Editor, Political Editor, White House correspondent and Southwest correspondent.

[wesw]

my god, that manifesto is grade A bullcrap worthy of Hillary clinton

[Gob]

Wes, you give me a headache, which fucking manifesto?

[wesw]

lol, sorry, the labour party manifesto

[Scooter]

my god, that manifesto is grade A bullcrap worthy of Hillary clinton

Because reading 15 sentences or sentence fragments, about 250 words in total, which someone yanked out of their context to obscure their meaning, is obviously a more honest and accurate way of judging the content of the remaining 20,000+ words in that document than actually reading it.

A statement like, "we will create a whole-person approach," for example, is obviously indecipherable without knowing where or why this approach is needed, what it look like, or how it will be applied. When restored to the sentence and very short paragraph from which it was butchered, we have this:

The current [health care] system is too fragmented. It was not designed for the growing numbers of people living with chronic conditions or multiple needs. Rather than having three separate systems for dealing with physical, mental and social care, we will create a whole person approach: a single service to meet all of a person’s health and care needs (p.34)

Now perhaps you could help me understand why it is "bullcrap" to (1) recognize that a fragmented health services delivery model does not meet the multiple care needs of the population (2) redesign the system based on meeting the health care needs of the "whole person", through a single point of care, which would be more effective and more efficient than continuing to work in silos.

This was one example among several where, even if someone is completely unaware that both public and private health care systems around the world have been moving in this direction for decades, it's just plain common sense. So instead of bringing forth some sort of cogent criticism of it, this DT writer was reduced to pretending that 99.9% of the document was never written, in order to pick nits with the 0.1% that was cherry picked for that purpose.

Are we supposed to believe that a DT writer is so clueless about the fundamentals of English prose composition that he/she does not understand that the singular elements of a piece of writing are intended to work together?

Although, to be fair, it appears to be a lesson that has yet to be learned by a substantial portion of the DT's readership, if the comments on this "story" are any indication.

[Gob]

http://www.bbc.com/news/election-2015-32573812


ETA:

"There isn't a single sentient being with connecting synapses anywhere in any planet in any universe who could think that was a good idea," said John Crace, a sketch writer for the Guardian, a left-leaning newspaper which last week endorsed Mr Miliband for prime minister.

[Gob]

1. A strong economic foundation to what? Strong in what way? There is nothing quantifiable and no clear target here.
2. What are the criteria for these higher living standards? Economic? Ecological? And what about those who live on their own? What about the retired?
3. What does this even mean? And again, where is the quantification?
4. There already are controls on immigration. What exactly is Miliband proposing that is different? What and how?
5. The last generation? You mean the end of civilization, or the previous generation? Can do better at what? Or is this should do better, or else?
6. There are already homes to buy. Are we talking private of public housing? What action on rents? Again: What is being proposed here? What actions and targets are we talking about?

ETA:

In ancient times...
Hundreds of years before the dawn of history
Lived a strange race of people... the Druids

No one knows who they were or what they were doing
But their legacy remains
Hewn into the living rock... Of Stonehenge

Stonehenge! Where the demons dwell
Where the banshees live and they do live well
Stonehenge! Where a man's a man
And the children dance to the Pipes of Pan

Hey!

Stonehenge! 'Tis a magic place
Where the moon doth rise with a dragon's face
Stonehenge! Where the virgins lie
And the prayers of devils fill the midnight sky

And you my love, won't you take my hand?
We'll go back in time to that mystic land
Where the dew drops cry and the cats meow
I will take you there, I will show you how

Oh!

And oh how they danced
The little children of Stonehenge
Beneath the haunted moon
For fear that daybreak might come too soon

And where are they now?
The little children of Stonehenge
And what would they say to us?
If we were here... tonight

[Crackpot]

Is that spinal tap?

[Scooter]

1. A strong economic foundation to what? Strong in what way? There is nothing quantifiable and no clear target here.
2. What are the criteria for these higher living standards? Economic? Ecological? And what about those who live on their own? What about the retired?
3. What does this even mean? And again, where is the quantification?
4. There already are controls on immigration. What exactly is Miliband proposing that is different? What and how?
5. The last generation? You mean the end of civilization, or the previous generation? Can do better at what? Or is this should do better, or else?
6. There are already homes to buy. Are we talking private of public housing? What action on rents? Again: What is being proposed here? What actions and targets are we talking about?

The slab was a stupid idea. Everyone agrees? Great. Moving on...

I have no doubt that both Miliband and the Labour Party platform have any number of weaknesses that could be legitimately criticized. So why are those who clearly have an irrepressible urge to criticize them settling for the kind of nitpicking twaddle of the last few days, and making themselves look foolish in the process? First there was the moron who was apparently heretofore unaware that the meaning of a piece of writing only becomes less clear by trying to find it in arbitrarily selected sentences in isolation from the rest. As for this latest intellectual marvel, has he/she never heard/seen a campaign slogan before? Is there someone breathing oxygen who seriously does not understand the concept, and who actually believes that six or seven words could ever convey even the most rudimentary specifics of any policy initiative? It's why "Lower Taxes for Working Families" is a campaign slogan, and why "An X% reduction in each bracket, plus enhanced tax credits for child care, mortgage interest and tuition" is not.


Is this really the best that the anti-Labour crowd can come up with? Or are they counting on an electorate gullible enough to fall for these sorts of ridiculous games?

[Gob]

..

I have no doubt that both Miliband and the Labour Party platform have any number of weaknesses that could be legitimately criticized. So why are those who clearly have an irrepressible urge to criticize them settling for the kind of nitpicking twaddle of the last few days, and making themselves look foolish in the process?

Well I believe the American expression is "a fat pitch", or to use the, more correct, cricket expression, "they are bowling pies out there!"

[Scooter]

Here we call them lob balls. And while I profess generalized ignorance of the political allegiances of UK media, not for one second do I buy that the Daily Telegraph is pulling for Labour. Judging from the comments when I read the article, it is a tactic that is scoring points with a certain type of voter, at least. And two occasions within a week when someone takes a document from the Labour Party and goes to great lengths of either dishonesty or obtuseness to convince people that it's meaningless jibberish. It looks like someone is trying to build a narrative that Labour is not

I haven't read through the platforms of either party, but something I was posting the other day got me browsing through both . In most cases they are remarkably similar, some nuanced differences in implementation, but pretty much all stemming from a shared philosophy, certainly less divergence than I see at home, but then our Conservative Party occasionally appears to want to out-Tea Party the Tea Party.

[wesw]

its bullcrap because its political easy speak, designed to offend no one and to really say nothing except nice fuzzy wittle bunny speak. soft kittens and bunnies for everyone!!!

(don t mention the fact that cats eat bunnies...)

[Scooter]

So clearly you have not been able to get past those few sentences that were cherry picked for effect, and so without taking the time to read even a few paragraphs of the document, you have decided that it says nothing, means nothing, proposes nothing. All because a journalist tricked you into believing something and now you can't let yourself admit to jumping to baseless conclusions.

[wesw]

i only read a few pages of Mein Kampf too. it was enough to know it was bullcrap.

of course your characterizations of what i think and believe are off base, but it s a free country.


gob! good use of baseball jargon! you get a free hot dog!

[Lord Jim]

C-SPAN will be simulcasting the British election results, and I'll be watching...

I'm an election results junkie...I watched the Australian election coverage and the Scottish Independence vote coverage too...

(Doesn't make me real popular in this house, but dammit we've got five television sets, and I ought to be able to watch this stuff on one of them... )

[wesw]

I like question time. we should adopt the practice here...