Re: The General Election Thread : Sat Mar 28, 2015 5:16 am  

Personally I think UKIP are a busted flush - I think they will get less seats than the Lib Dems and this could be the Tories saving grace.

It seems no one wants to have a coalition with Cameron so unless he can pull a rabbit out of the hat he is done for.

Nicola Sturgeon was on radio 4 yesterday, the arrogance is something to behold. The SNP will hold the power they might as well make Salmon PM because he will effectively be pulling the 2 Eds strings. Something is wrong when a party who get 1m votes dictates policy for the whole country

Re: The General Election Thread : Sat Mar 28, 2015 8:33 am  

cod'ead wrote: I bet there is when it comes to a division. What's his voting record like? 7.9% voting as a "rebel" http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/mp.php?mpid=1672 I don't know what the average is but it emphasis's my belief that all MP's should be free to vote in accordance with either their own conscience, their own local party instructions or to the benefit of their constituency BEFORE the national political party - there is little point in getting to know your MP if he/she is simply ALWAYS going to toe the line and vote for the party, you may as well elect a 10 year old child to do that, what you need from an MP is someone who is resident in the constituency (genuinely resident), who runs weekly surgeries (Mulholland has two per week on a Saturday), and who gets involved with local issues and campaigns and will take action on behalf of a constituent - for me Mulholland does this and he has twice assisted me in issues that I raised via email to him on one occasion introducing me to a senior manager in a Department who took on a case for me, the bugger disagreed with me in the end but at least I got above the sheep who normally just churn out standard letters. When I am The Great Benevolent Leader the first thing in the bin will be the party whip system.

cod'ead wrote: I bet there is when it comes to a division. What's his voting record like? 7.9% voting as a "rebel" http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/mp.php?mpid=1672 I don't know what the average is but it emphasis's my belief that all MP's should be free to vote in accordance with either their own conscience, their own local party instructions or to the benefit of their constituency BEFORE the national political party - there is little point in getting to know your MP if he/she is simply ALWAYS going to toe the line and vote for the party, you may as well elect a 10 year old child to do that, what you need from an MP is someone who is resident in the constituency (genuinely resident), who runs weekly surgeries (Mulholland has two per week on a Saturday), and who gets involved with local issues and campaigns and will take action on behalf of a constituent - for me Mulholland does this and he has twice assisted me in issues that I raised via email to him on one occasion introducing me to a senior manager in a Department who took on a case for me, the bugger disagreed with me in the end but at least I got above the sheep who normally just churn out standard letters. When I am The Great Benevolent Leader the first thing in the bin will be the party whip system.

Re: The General Election Thread : Sat Mar 28, 2015 2:14 pm  

he's doing well if he can find two Saturdays in a week...

Re: The General Election Thread : Sat Mar 28, 2015 6:32 pm  

R_Tomlinson wrote:

he's doing well if he can find two Saturdays in a week...

Have you ever managed to do two things in one day ?

Re: The General Election Thread : Sat Mar 28, 2015 7:01 pm  

Just out of curiosity is anyone on this forum even considering voting for the hard of joined up thinking party?

The only criteria that makes sense to me is that the right to vote has been hard fought for, so people should. Fine if you don't but you really can't complain if things are not to your liking when the election is over.

I'm looking forward to seeing the high standard of apathy being improved upon this election and the country will be "governed" by a camel type government.

Re: The General Election Thread : Sat Mar 28, 2015 8:04 pm  

I look forward to a hanged parliament.

Re: The General Election Thread : Sun Mar 29, 2015 11:09 am  

JerryChicken wrote: 7.9% voting as a "rebel" http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/mp.php?mpid=1672 I don't know what the average is but it emphasis's my belief that all MP's should be free to vote in accordance with either their own conscience, their own local party instructions or to the benefit of their constituency BEFORE the national political party - there is little point in getting to know your MP if he/she is simply ALWAYS going to toe the line and vote for the party, you may as well elect a 10 year old child to do that, what you need from an MP is someone who is resident in the constituency (genuinely resident), who runs weekly surgeries (Mulholland has two per week on a Saturday), and who gets involved with local issues and campaigns and will take action on behalf of a constituent - for me Mulholland does this and he has twice assisted me in issues that I raised via email to him on one occasion introducing me to a senior manager in a Department who took on a case for me, the bugger disagreed with me in the end but at least I got above the sheep who normally just churn out standard letters. When I am The Great Benevolent Leader the first thing in the bin will be the party whip system. The vast majority of voters vote for a party rather than for an individual. Whilst I want my MP to have a degree of independence I wouldnt want an MP who relies on the support of the party to gain election and then completely ignores the party's manifesto once elected.

JerryChicken wrote: 7.9% voting as a "rebel" http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/mp.php?mpid=1672 I don't know what the average is but it emphasis's my belief that all MP's should be free to vote in accordance with either their own conscience, their own local party instructions or to the benefit of their constituency BEFORE the national political party - there is little point in getting to know your MP if he/she is simply ALWAYS going to toe the line and vote for the party, you may as well elect a 10 year old child to do that, what you need from an MP is someone who is resident in the constituency (genuinely resident), who runs weekly surgeries (Mulholland has two per week on a Saturday), and who gets involved with local issues and campaigns and will take action on behalf of a constituent - for me Mulholland does this and he has twice assisted me in issues that I raised via email to him on one occasion introducing me to a senior manager in a Department who took on a case for me, the bugger disagreed with me in the end but at least I got above the sheep who normally just churn out standard letters. When I am The Great Benevolent Leader the first thing in the bin will be the party whip system. The vast majority of voters vote for a party rather than for an individual. Whilst I want my MP to have a degree of independence I wouldnt want an MP who relies on the support of the party to gain election and then completely ignores the party's manifesto once elected.

Re: The General Election Thread : Sun Mar 29, 2015 11:30 am  

Cibaman wrote:

The vast majority of voters vote for a party rather than for an individual. Whilst I want my MP to have a degree of independence I wouldnt want an MP who relies on the support of the party to gain election and then completely ignores the party's manifesto once elected.

Thats what I would like to turn on its head - you can still have the political party's with their manifesto's (or sales leaflets as I prefer) but your MP should be free to speak out and to vote according to his/her constituency guidance - maybe it would even involve more in communicating with their MP ?

Just to give two examples I have this morning listened to IDS refuse to discuss where his proposed £10bn worth of welfare cuts are going to be applied in the next term, he even denied that he had any targets in mind and insisted that nothing would be decided or announced until AFTER the elections, this was followed by Lucy Powell (Labour) stating that they would not have a budget to work with until "they had seen the books", in other words both of the major party's in this election are not being honest in their sales pitches and are expecting us to believe that they won't make any decisions on any project or expenditure until they form a government - despite this they are all making sweeping promises of what they will do in order to win your vote, in fact ONLY to win your vote, we all know what happens to policies when a hung parliament looms, they are the first thing to go in the shredder.

Can you honestly say that you'd prefer a system of sales pitches of vague promises versus a person who will actually represent the constituency in which you and they both live ?

Re: The General Election Thread : Sun Mar 29, 2015 12:08 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote:

Personally I think UKIP are a busted flush - I think they will get less seats than the Lib Dems and this could be the Tories saving grace.

It seems no one wants to have a coalition with Cameron so unless he can pull a rabbit out of the hat he is done for.

Nicola Sturgeon was on radio 4 yesterday, the arrogance is something to behold. The SNP will hold the power they might as well make Salmon PM because he will effectively be pulling the 2 Eds strings. Something is wrong when a party who get 1m votes dictates policy for the whole country

It's always going to be hard to get large scale electoral backing for a minor party to grow. The first past the post electoral system is heavily weighted to the 2 main parties.

That said I expect UKIP to get an handful of seats on about 10% of the vote with reasonable numbers of second places in a few Northern Labour seats. I expect them to have a bigger impact longer term.

Re: The General Election Thread : Sun Mar 29, 2015 12:17 pm  

Did see Lucy Powell interview on Daily Politics this morning? Very cringe-worthy. She just couldn't come up with a credible plan for deficit reduction. I can only assume under Labour we as a country will continue to run a deficit till the IMF are called in.