Your analysis of silly partisan comments was the 66th post (including yours and Anthony’s).

I think what followed showed a distinct improvement.

Please provide a similar service for the next few days. I think that could have an enduring effect.

QUESTION TIME

It’s when they laugh openly at the party line you know there is a change of Government on the way. I havn’t heard that.

ASHCROFT

Can anybody tell me which, if any, constituencies in Scotland are targeted with Ashcroft money?

I assumed that there were none, and that the Conservatives couldn’t be so stupid, but yes, it’s possible. Look what Labour did. They announced a state funeral for MT in the middle of one bye-election in Glasgow, and refused entry to the pipe band from Glasgow’s twin town, Lahore in the middle of another.

Yes! If they really try the Conservatives can be as insensitive as that. They managed it before with the poll tax and threats to privatise water.

They should promise in their manifesto that they will make it legal to use dogs to hunt for haggis. That should do it.

John Healey, Minister for Pubs has announced a major package of reforms to support pubs. This announcement reflects all of the hard work and tireless campaigning that we in CAMRA have been doing both nationally and locally to protect consumers, community pubs and local brewers.

The Government’s new 12 point action plan promises sweeping reforms on a wide variety of subjects.

To support community pubs, the Government has announced:
Greater protection for pubs under threat of demolition
A ban on the anti-competitive practice of imposing restrictive covenants on the sale of pubs
Greater flexibility for pubs to diversify by adding shops and other facilities without planning permission
£1 million Government funding for Pub is The Hub
£3 million to support Community pub ownership
Greater freedom for pubs to host live music without a specific licence

Now I’m off for a siesta

Danny Alexander MAY be vulnerable, but who knows?

Scottish polling is sparse, but does suggest that overall the LDs have lost about 11% support since 2005, with most of that going SNP. But where has that happened? UNS is even less useful in Scotland than GB, since we have 3 and 4 way contests.

LD support may have held up throughout the Highlands, and dropped even more massively elsewhere, or Inverness etc may become a 3 way marginal.

We’ll find out around dawn on 7 May!

The programme of real significance last night was on BBC2 at 9pm following some MPs who are standing down at the election. Anne Widdecombe and Richard Caborn tried to engage with a “lost generation” of people who have never voted and appear to have little intention of voting. How can we engage with those who choose to be disenfranchised? An active 75 year old who was training young people in a Sheffield Gym said (joked) that if he hadn’t voted, his “suffragette” Mum would have killed him. Yet today the only, even though marginal, token of democracy is rejected and neglected due to apathy, and an appalling level of political discourse, especially from the media(whether that be the BBC, the Sun and even the broad sheets).

On this blog, I feel that number crunching and all the acronyms about polling, seem to hide what’s behind the numbers. Why Cameron or Brown or Clegg or Green Party? Does an airbrushed Cameron have any political depth or substance – where is his ideology? Same question to the others. Do the powers that be think that ideological questions are perhaps beyond the masses?

Many people say that there is nothing to choose between the parties, which I think is nonsense. But the big problem is that the parties don’t don’t resonate with the people and don’t spell out clearly their ideology, vision and policies that go with them. What happens if election upon election the apathy grows, until the voting percentage is 40% and then 30% – what happens to democracy? Or perhaps even the fall in voting numbers is not to do with apathy, but a recognition that democracy is on the wane, due to the increasing power of transnational companies, that bypass one countries laws to move to another one that fits better with their business plan.

I hope this isn’t too heavy for a friday afternoon.