Open discussion thread
Posted on November 7th, 2009 by Anthony Wells
There’s rather too many partisan comments cropping up in the comments threads, so I can I remind people to follow the comments policy please… except in this thread, where you are welcome to indulge yourselves in tiresome and pointless partisan rants and oneupmanship.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Well, I thought Simon Cowell was an arrogant cockeral after his remark about not insulting ‘our’ PM. He obviously does not follow the polls and has no idea about politics.
Like Brown he thinks he can get away with treating the public like idiots by saving the talentless twins and sending home a pop star. I shall not be watching this programme anymore.
Muzza
“Of course, immigration should be unrelated to race, but invariably the two get linked thanks to our right-wing press and politicians on the right of the political spectrum.”
Could it be that the two are linked because generally speaking immigrants are not English, Scottish or Welsh?
Just in case you were wondering, race is not to do with colour of skin. Poles, Rumanians etc are not British either.
i think we all need to grow up somewhat, we all have our problems with the policy of this party or that party, but we can all put our point across in a calm manor with out shouting four bell of ball’s out of each other, im no fan of everybody proping up there favored party but can still see the point in it. in any case all parties have there faults weather it be UKIP, tories or labour for that matter and so long as your point is put in a reasoned way i can not see why it should be moderated or deleted, so can we all calm down and grow up please.
“…in this thread… you are welcome to indulge yourselves in tiresome and pointless partisan rants and one-upmanship.”
Wrong place for me then (although I have to say these threads have a way of becoming very civilised when everyone settles down)
There’s a new Scotland poll–such a rarity!
*looks around anxiously*
Nothing. Nothing. Eek!
Scotland Herald didn’t even even bother to mention the poor LD while they were bashing the SNP for doubling their support from the last GE and polling 40% voting intentions in Holyrood. Apparently that means they’re being “shunned”. *rolls eyes*
I have the feeling that means that the LD are in for a good kicking in Scotland but I’d like to see the numbers–and the questions. =)
By the way, Scotland had its own justice system before devolution and has always had its own justice system. The Scottish justice system was not dismantled by the Act of Union. And Labour didn’t “give” the Scots devolution. It was by popular ballot which, I will admit, is an odd concept.
Democracy, you know.
46.Lab 39% (n/c), SNP 25% (+7), Con 18% (+2), LD 12% (-11) gives (Baxter):
Lab 42 seats (+2)
LD 7 seats (-4)
SNP 7 seats (+1)
Con 3 seats (+2)
(Speaker (Martin) 0 seats (-1))
4 seats changing hands would be Lib Dem losses:
- Argyll & Bute CON gain
- Berwickshire, Roxburgh & Selkirk CON gain
- Inverness, Nairn Badenoch & Strathspey LAB gain
- Dunbartonshire East Lab gain
… and 1 SNP gain from Lab:
- Ochil & South Perthshire
… plus 1 by-election revert:
- Dunfermline & West Fife LAB re-gain
NEW SCOTTISH POLL link:
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/politics/salmond-poll-blow-as-voters-shun-snp-1.931344
Anthony, can you explain the absolutely VAST discrepancy between Westminster and Holyrood voting intention? I can’t!
(see also this morning’s thread at politicalbetting.com)
@ MUZZA
“Immigration has been largely good for this country”
That is an opinion-but not neccessarily a fact.
A House of Lords Committee concluded that per capita GDP was unaltered as a result of immigration.
The effect on the provision of things like housing & healthcare , is manifest.
“And yes in case you are wondering, I am from an ethnic minority so shoot me down!”
I wasn’t wondering-the ethicity of people who post here has never been of interest to me-indeed you are the first person I can recall here who has declared their ethnicity in support of their argument.
I would still disagree with you if you could trace your roots back to Alfred the Great.
@Colin
And of course, if Muzza COULD trace his ancestry back to Alfred the Great, he’d still be the descendant of immigrants!
I have always been largely anti-immigration, and always my motivation has been to try and limit the total population of the UK, rather than to “preserve” its ethnic mix. I am very aware that there are lots of people who come to the same position from a totally different direction. I think it is perfectly possible (and I have come across it from time to time) for a British resident from an ethnic minority to be firmly against continued immigration. Just because someone isn’t “indigenous” doesn’t mean that they are happy to see their local park/playing field/farmland buried under more housing for an increasing population.
As a policeman doing house-to-house enquiries in inner London, I was often struck by the contrast between the workshy, drug addled, ignorant “British” residents in some flats and the cheerful, coherent, well balanced immigrants who were their neighbours. The problem is though that although immigrants allow us to “get the job done” in low paid industries, the fact that they do so with such commitment and effectiveness deflects us from the real problem which is how did we allow hundreds of thousands of UK households to decline to the point where “work” is a dirty word.
(By the way, whilst we’re wearing our hearts on our sleeves, I am the son of an immigrant, albeit a white one).
The full details of the herald poll aren’t available but if you put the Lab and SNP figures in to Webster sandwicks Scotland votes calculator for Holyrood you get this result for Holyrood.
Lab 43 (-3), SNP 54 (+7), LibDem 14 (-2), Tory 15 (-2), Grn 2 (-) Ind 1 (-)
That is a very good result mid term for the SNP.
I have little problem with the idea that we might have slipped back at Westminster, but I don’t see it as a massive blow and its a bit much for the Herald to portray it as such three days before the Glasgow Poll.
Oddly Labour don’t seem to have made a formal committment that i have seen to Building the Glasgow airport rail link even though they have made a major campaign issue of the SNP minority government cancelling it.
I’ll make a rash prediction that they will condemn its cancellation roundly between now and friday but won’t vote to reinstate it come the Budget in March…..
Peter.
Stephen W comment (the first one on this thread) is not an expression of an opinion, it is just plain rude. It discredits this blog that it was not moderated out.
PETER ET AL
I’m not usually a press conspiracy type but the Herald “shun SNP” headline is one of the worst examples of flagrant bias in the less than glorious annals of the increasingly pathetic Scottish press.
In fact, a glance at the TNS Systems Three website would show that the LAST Scottish Parliament voting intention poll was in June not May as the paper states and the SNP consituency vote has gone UP from 39 to 40 over that period! Hardly a statistically significant movement but rather explodes their “honeymoon over” analysis.
THE SNP ARE THEREFORE THE FIRST PARTY IN HISTORY TO BE “SHUNNED” BY THEIR VOTE GOING UP AND WINNING A PROJECTED 54 SEATS COMPARED TO THE PRESENT 47!
If this were the Daily Mail we would all shrug our shoulders – but the once half decent Herald! -
HOW PATHETIC
PETER
Full Scottish Parliament TNS S3 figures are
Q1) snp 40 lab 32 tory 13 lib 11
Q2) snp 37 lab 29 tory 12 lib 12
you may wish to calculate and send to the poltical editor of the Herald.
@ NEILA:-
“The problem is though that although immigrants allow us to “get the job done” in low paid industries, the fact that they do so with such commitment and effectiveness deflects us from the real problem which is how did we allow hundreds of thousands of UK households to decline to the point where “work” is a dirty word.”
Absolutely agree Neil.
I would like to think I may have a great deal in common with the 40% or so of people, disillusioned with labour, who now seem to have firmly made up their minds that David Cameron will be the next PM.
Reading the posts on this great site, it’s amazing how the same political period affected people differently & how we all have a different perspective of right & wrong, success & failure.
It’s not unreasonable to see Maggie’s years as a general triumph (albeit qualified in some areas) – killing of rubbish industries that never contributed anything to the tax take (previously gobbling up vast subsidies instead), destroying these hotbeds of left-wing fanaticism and replacing them with fantastic, profitable companies like Nissan, Honda, Toyota and a host of electronic companies, (including new start ups like ours – now 25 years old – no thanks to labour), all making profits, providing great quality jobs and paying over plenty of tax. Many thought the Community Charge (brilliant piece of Labour PR calling it the Poll Tax) was basically very fair. Others hated it. Labour just saw it as a political opprtunity.
On a personal note I got better service from the NHS then than I do now (like an instant x-ray of a dislocated shoulder in A & E – on a Saturday and just a few weeks wait for a knee op) and at least I got to go free to the dentist from time to time.
Some took advantage of the opportunities on offer under the Tories and benefitted. Other people looked inwards and suffered.
Under Labour everyone seems to have suffered – or they are certainly about to whoever gets elected next.
Left wingers and the politically correct hail the minimum wage as a triumph but it helped to destroy our country’s electronics manufacturing industry and many others. Our company has survived in business very much despite labour not because of them and we have been obliged to export nearly 100 jobs to mainland China.
Stuff that now comes more than half way round the world that used to be made here in the UK. They didn’t want us to make things here any more and they made sure we couldn’t. Don’t give me a hard time about all that climate change crxx. I didn’t do it. They did.
When other aspects of life under Labour are taken into account like the increase in prices of all descriptions especially tax & the cost of government, who’s really better off? Couple all the future economic pain with the encroachment of the State into every single aspect of our lives and it’s no-one that I know of, that’s for sure.
How anyone posting here can try & claim it’s not Labour’s fault we’re in this mess ….they’ve been in government for 12 years for Heaven’s sake….!
High wage, high price economies don’t seem to work out in the long term. They create bubbles of apparent prosperity then the reality of finding out you actually have to be worth what you earn in the real world comes back to bite you up the xxx.
Labour used to have some respectable folk in power – politicians like Clare Short,Tony Benn, Robin Cook. Honourable people – just hard not to fundamentally disagree with their ideas.
Today I am at a complete loss to understand how anyone can even contemplate voting labour right now and yet from the polls a 25% hard core of voters seem determined to condemn our country to complete oblivion.
My wife burst into tears when Labour were first elected and said “they’ll ruin us”. I was more sanguine and was prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Imagine my despair at knowing she was right all along and I was so terribly, terribly wrong. Never again.
Mister David
“One of my main problems with Proportional Representation is that it embeds partisanship, in the sense that MPs under that system are slaves to their whips, not servants to their constituents.”
I used to think so and was for STV and argued this point with Donald Dewar many times when we were at school. Now that I see how the Scottish Parliament is working, I find that I was wrong, but you need to take the whole package.
Moley – very funny piece of satire – i rumbled you when you when you got to the minimum wage.
What’s scary is that a lot of people miss your satire and actually believe it is true!
RC
One reason why peoply should not never vote Labour again: weak arguments like yours.
Devolution in the referendum was supported by a huge majority (and still is). You are in favour of referenda? Democracy?
Megrahi was not a political issue, but a legal one, and rightly so.
Moley, I think you are right about how one’s personal experience affects one perspective on a peiod of Government.
The ‘81 recession which dispropotionatley affected Scotland, Wales and the North entrenched many people as deeply anti-conservative.
Also, despite Camerons make over many people view the Tories as deeply iliberal ,containing many homophobes and rascists within their ranks.
There is a great piece in Bridget Jones Diary when at a dinner party they are all discussing the Economy etc and she says being Labour is about Nelson Mandela, Gays and Stuff
JR, I say labour enabled devolution you are right it was scots themselves who introduced it.
@ Moley
“Under Labour everyone seems to have suffered “[=
I am not sure how you can qualify this statement. You seem to base it on your own personal opinion. If i do this then i can argue that teh following people are better off under Labour (using my own personal experience):
- Anyone using the NHS
- Anyone in school, or sending their kids too school
- Pensioners
- Families with pre-school age children
- Fathers wanting paternity pay
- LGBT community
- The homeless/vulnerably housed
- Women & Ethnic minorities in teh workplace.
It takes a particular kind of arrogance to presume that just because you haven’t been positively affected by the last 12 years that no one is better off under Labour.
Personally I don’t hate Tories (that much) and they have got better than they ere before. And I wish that Labour would focus more time on some of the issues that I care about i.e housing & homelessness, and public transport (privatisation was been a disaster, a Tory disaster) but all in all the Tories haven’t given me one reason to support them , and Labour have given me plenty (Gordon Brown not being one!)
Well this is what a tongue in cheek open thread is all about I guess …what fun!!
@ John TT
” Moley – very funny piece of satire – i rumbled you when you got to the minimum wage.
What’s scary is that a lot of people miss your satire and actually believe it is true!”
John ..Tell that to the people who don’t work for our firm any more, like a former colleague who used to use the cash from a low paid part time job to supplement her hubby’s wages to go on holiday once a year and hasn’t had one since. The NMW served to push all our costs up and as a result, prices. The result in our manufacturing firm? No more orders…”simples”.
When the economic bubble was at its bubbliest the NMW was inflation busting but worked for many, many people. Thus, with apparent good reason everyone decided they could do without low wage jobs. I happen to think they have their place and, via the benefits and tax system, can act as a useful and legal subsidy for manufacturing that would otherwise be done elsewhere in the world.
@ JACK CORNISH
The great achievements of Labour
“- Anyone using the NHS”
tell that to my son who has the same eye problem as Gordon Brown but has to have it followed in France since they want to wait ’til his retina detatches here in the UK. Anything to get him off the list and meet the targets. After all he’s not one of the elite.
“- Anyone in school, or sending their kids too school”
Tell that to everyone who can’t get their child into a decent school and are so desperate they feel obliged to deceive the system and become criminalised.
“- Pensioners”
Tell that to the pensioners who can’t afford to live and have been protesting about unending and unaffordable rises in their council tax, water bills and electricity.
“- Families with pre-school age children”
Tell that to my sister who is a pre school head and is tearing her hair out at the massive budget cuts they are trying to impose
“- Fathers wanting paternity pay”
An admirable objective but another nail in the coffin of small UK manufacturing & hardly a priority under the current circumstances.
“- LGBT community”
True. This is a lifestyle choice for a growing minority and a necessity for some. It would be nice to give the same freedom & recognition to people who live & work in the countryside instead of taking it away.
“- The homeless/vulnerably housed”
Thought they were going to “eliminate poverty” – they didn’t do it did they? They’ve had 12 years.
“- Women & Ethnic minorities in the workplace”
Except it’s far from a simple equation since we would have significantly less disparity if there had been any semblance of control over immigration.
You imply a person is arrogant for speaking of their own experiences and applying them to a point of view. Well of course it must be very arrogant to presume that the experience and opinions of one individual or those of the 40% or so of others who will vote to get rid of these people would matter for one single second in the eyes of our political masters.
Is arrogance not the speciality of political leaders & their supporters who continually fail to take responsibility for failure and harp on endlessly about the few things they actually got right?
Oh …and as for public transportation – yes it was pretty screwed up for decades and the Conservative privatisation failed to make it any better but it did raise some dosh for us taxpayers that got mysteriously blown away since 1997. After 12 years of Labour it’s now fantastic … naturally! (I’m being sarcastic by the way)!
@ Moley,
My point was that you cannot just say that you can’t understand why people would vote for Labour and i was giving some examples of people who might. I can completely understand why some people hate labour, i understand why some people vote Tory or Lib Dem or SNP. That is the difference i was (clumsily) trying to point out. I can understand that if you don’t like the EU, and place this as a high priority on your list then you will vote for the Tories or maybe UKIP. To be honest I couldn’t care less about the EU, so it’s not something that effects my decision!
“Oh …and as for public transportation – yes it was pretty screwed up for decades and the Conservative privatisation failed to make it any better but it did raise some dosh for us taxpayers that got mysteriously blown away since 1997. After 12 years of Labour it’s now fantastic … naturally! (I’m being sarcastic by the way)!”
My point was to demonstrate that i don’t think Labour has done anything on this. I don’t think it has got worse particularly, but it sure hasn’t got better. I do like teh fact that Labour gave the power over transport to the London major & Transport for London. Something that could be used in other cities perhaps?
Labour have done some good things, they have done some bad things, they have done nothing on some issues. The Tories will probably be teh same. Its just I trust Labour to have more things in the good things column, and less in the bad things column compared to the Tories. The Lib Dems as ever are irrelevant.
Nothing much changes
@ Jack Cornish:-
“- Pensioners”
What planet are you on?????????????
Don’t come round here & say that-you’ll get luynched.
I feel the urge to add a peice of pointless information about my family (that makes things intresting for me atleast). My eldest sister (28 years old) is a tory my next sister (24) is liberal democrat and im labour (22)
P Mean
‘My eldest sister (28 years old) is a tory my next sister (24) is liberal democrat and im labour (22)’
I kind of feel sorry for you all!
You don’t have to ‘become’ a party in order to engage with politics. Feel free to vote Labour, or whoever, but they are just a party, and not remotely worth labelling yourself or anyone else with. Life is best when we are as un-tribal as possible, and we are free to relate to one another as human beings, rather than the embodiment of some category.
I keep reading the BNP are nasty with vile policies, no one seems to say what these vile policies are though, just what is vile about them, i’ve read them on the BNP site and they are common sense.
“There’s rather too many partisan comments cropping up in the comments threads, so I can I remind people to follow the comments policy please… except in this thread, where you are welcome to indulge yourselves in tiresome and pointless partisan rants and oneupmanship.”
Oh woe is you!
I mean, really!
How naive you are.
Yeah, yeah – “hey I know, i’ll set up an online polling site where anyone can leave comments, and no-one will ever leave partisan comments.”
[rolls eyes]
If you want a dry academic exercise, then set up a proper forum with membership and control and moderation and qualified membership… I suspect you decided you want the hit count to climb up the blog polls to gain status… fine – just don’t bitch about the sideeffects of it!
The internet is *public space*… you are like a street performer, and all the people who post round here are the audience – get over it!
you’re in the *public arena* – you know you’re a major source of info – and you want to be… plus you’ve got your mugshot up on YouGov, career building.
So don’t have the cheek to take a swipe at the punters who’ve helped you up by visiting and contributing – as though there are an angelic bunch of disciples who toadyingly follow your instructions to the letter, and the rest a neandertha riff raff who are kicking down your sandcastle and “wooining evwyfing, mummy”.
EVERYONE who comes here makes partisan comments, and MOST do it in moderation and have rational discussions that are usually about 80% to do with the polls – that’s reasonable… obviously people who come here to visit are interested in politics and have feelings and views about things, it’s entirely unrealistic and disingenouous to demand that they don’t – we’re not a research group in a university statistics/poltiics department, we’re mix of people from all walks of life with varied experience and qualifications.
Frankly, I think you’re throwing your toys out of the pram.
If you want to do it properly to filter out the sh!theads, go for it (not these silly nuisance bolt ons that you’ve stuck on) – I might even help (as an engineer), but don’t bitch and moan at your own audience – that’s bad netiquette – very bad!
tsk…
Seal Pup
Now that’s what I call straight to the point no messing about. Well done.
I don’t come on here to make partisan comments but because the information I get is better than a horoscope, Nostradamus, eye of newt etc. for predicting the outcome of elections.
I also do my best to input information of that sort for the benefit of English readers who may wish to know more of the entirely different situation in Scotland and the need to interpret UK data with care so far as Scottish constituencies are concerned.
Beyond that I sometimes take the opportunity to rubbish partisan comments by others. That does not mean excepting the party which I currently expect to vote for in the next elections, and I have made it clear more than once that in my view their distinguishing policy is neither necessary not desirable, though I will vote it for it reluctantly.
As a Unitarian, I am opposed to faith systems of any sort, be they religious or political. I have never been a member of any political party.