Questiontime

[Oh Buoy]

I’m relatively new to the world of politics. I gained some interest in it last year and found myself watching more and more debates – some on topics I deeply care about and some that I have literally no understanding about.

 

From what I’ve gathered, I don’t think there’s ever going to be a peaceful and effective solution to any rising or existing topic. Why? Because it seems someone always needs to lose out, or there’s a domino effect of problems, or parties aren’t transparent or humanity as a whole, isn’t as stable as we’d like to believe it is. It feels we’re stuck in a one-party mentality and an ongoing historical reflection that encourages tactical voting and zero progress to a fairer, greener and wonderful country.

 

Frankly, I couldn’t give two fucks whether you’re pro-Labour or believe deeply in the Conversative – it really doesn’t matter. What matters is understanding the implications of our decisions at this moment in time (whilst learning what worked and what didn’t work from the past). How we can make both short-term and long-term plans that work towards a better future? How can we build a government that’s fair, transparent and doesn’t build it’s campaigns around election dates? If you’re going to improve this country, you need to be actively engaged with the people whom live here and we all need to work together to achieve this.

 

Fuck your one party.

 

Rebuild the fucking government. 

[Dr Nowt]

On phone so not posting whole article, but can thoroughly recommend this from Iannucci:

 

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/04/armando-iannucci-it-s-time-very-british-revolution

[Dr Arthur De Sabre]

The south east has always been a parasite on the rest of the country. Absolutely anything of any worth, coal, cotton, shipyards, steam engines, the absolute life's blood of the country for centuries has been produced in the North, yet as soon as it can be done somewhere else the whole operation gets shut down and entire communities get thrown on the scrapheap, with their decendents villified as chavs, wasters and benefit fraudsters.

 

The one, great constant though is that the south east, which throughout the centuries has produced pretty much fuck all of any worth, has been the mount doom of all national wealth, while even now, the only thing it's good at is fixing Libor rates, pimping itself out to Russians and exploiting Romanian slave labour. Absolute carbuncle of twattishness that needs lancing. Throw the wealth creators in the English channel.

You missed out the slave trade, Liverpool will always be stained by it - the descendants of the traders down south have pretty much washed it from their conscience.

[Oh Buoy]

I've decided.

 

I'm going to start my own government.   

 

It's called the "Buoy's gonna' sort it" club. 

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

I've decided.

 

I'm going to start my own government.   

 

It's called the "Buoy's gonna' sort it" club.

Bagsy writing the official account in a three book deal? First part is 'From Boy's Glub to Buoy's Club'.

 

It all started one late Friday morning, it was humid and emotions were running high on TLW...

[Oh Buoy]

Bagsy writing the official account in a three book deal? First part is 'From Boy's Glub to Buoy's Club'.

 

It all started one late Friday morning, it was humid and emotions were running high on TLW...

 

Let's talk percentages... 

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Let's talk percentages...

100% for me. Let's start there.

[Oh Buoy]

100% for me. Let's start there.

No dice.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

I'm happy with that. I have the money, you keep the dice.

[Oh Buoy]

I'm happy with that. I have the money, you keep the dice.

Thats fine. I'll tax you 100%.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Thats fine. I'll tax you 100%.

That's fine, I have no dice to tax. Anyway, about this money, can I get it in advance?

[Moctezuma]

The south east has always been a parasite on the rest of the country. Absolutely anything of any worth, coal, cotton, shipyards, steam engines, the absolute life's blood of the country for centuries has been produced in the North, yet as soon as it can be done somewhere else the whole operation gets shut down and entire communities get thrown on the scrapheap, with their decendents villified as chavs, wasters and benefit fraudsters. 

 

The one, great constant though is that the south east, which throughout the centuries has produced pretty much fuck all of any worth, has been the mount doom of all national wealth, while even now, the only thing it's good at is fixing Libor rates, pimping itself out to Russians and exploiting Romanian slave labour. Absolute carbuncle of twattishness that needs lancing. Throw the wealth creators in the English channel.

 

As per usual Section is in Nail-on-head territory here. Since my move down to here I’m consistently amazed by how parochial and thick people are in what is meant to be a ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘international city’. I’ve had conversations with people that have very little understanding of the rest of the UK’s geography, when I say I’m from Aberdeen and the folks are scouse, I get the impression that people think I grew up in some sort of yurt.

I’ve had dyed in the wool Conservatives saying that “You Scots always supping off us” I turn around and say well given the fact Aberdeen/the revenue form the oil industry almost single handily propped up Thatcher’s shite economic policies and kept you lot well off you should be thanking me, at this juncture they often need me to explain that the Oil industry exists…

 

A mate here from Sunderland once got told, “good to see you got on your bike” (a reference to Norman ‘thick as fuck’ Tebit) he said to the boy “yeah, you’ve just had to sit on your backside”. The reason a good proportion of them vote Conservative, is because life is already fairly easy for them and they can’t generate empathy or understand what it would be like in a place where the worlds ‘flight capital’ (due to inventive tax avoidance) is coming to land. There is also a total lack of comprehension that getting a job might not just be easy, which in part is where the vindictive anti-benefits stuff is sourced from.

 

I had a drunken row with an ex once where I said people in London don’t actually produce anything, they’re just lily gilders. The industries collected here are multifarious but they tend to have one thing in common they don’t really produce anything concrete that you can hold in your hand. It’s all ephemeral media, swindling banking, egregiously paid troops of legalese and PR showmanship guffery. There’s the occasional key worker thrown in but their housing is being eyed up by the twats and soon they’ll be bussed in from Birmingham.

 

London and the southeast (much like the banking sector it so fetes) is akin to one gigantic layer of middle management, supping off the rest of the world.

 

The amount that gets spent on the population per-head in the south east in comparison with the rest of the country (in particular with regards to transport) is revolting, but then when MPs are parked there for half/more of their time it’s hardly surprising that this occurs.

[Oh Buoy]

Buoy for Prime Minister. 

[Section_31]

Buoy for Prime Minister. 

 

 

You Buoy 

 

 

Buoys Buoys Buoys 

 

 

Wild Buoys 

[mattyq]

As per usual Section is in Nail-on-head territory here. Since my move down to here I’m consistently amazed by how parochial and thick people are in what is meant to be a ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘international city’. I’ve had conversations with people that have very little understanding of the rest of the UK’s geography, when I say I’m from Aberdeen and the folks are scouse, I get the impression that people think I grew up in some sort of yurt.

I’ve had dyed in the wool Conservatives saying that “You Scots always supping off us” I turn around and say well given the fact Aberdeen/the revenue form the oil industry almost single handily propped up Thatcher’s shite economic policies and kept you lot well off you should be thanking me, at this juncture they often need me to explain that the Oil industry exists…

 

A mate here from Sunderland once got told, “good to see you got on your bike” (a reference to Norman ‘thick as fuck’ Tebit) he said to the boy “yeah, you’ve just had to sit on your backside”. The reason a good proportion of them vote Conservative, is because life is already fairly easy for them and they can’t generate empathy or understand what it would be like in a place where the worlds ‘flight capital’ (due to inventive tax avoidance) is coming to land. There is also a total lack of comprehension that getting a job might not just be easy, which in part is where the vindictive anti-benefits stuff is sourced from.

 

I had a drunken row with an ex once where I said people in London don’t actually produce anything, they’re just lily gilders. The industries collected here are multifarious but they tend to have one thing in common they don’t really produce anything concrete that you can hold in your hand. It’s all ephemeral media, swindling banking, egregiously paid troops of legalese and PR showmanship guffery. There’s the occasional key worker thrown in but their housing is being eyed up by the twats and soon they’ll be bussed in from Birmingham.

 

London and the southeast (much like the banking sector it so fetes) is akin to one gigantic layer of middle management, supping off the rest of the world.

 

The amount that gets spent on the population per-head in the south east in comparison with the rest of the country (in particular with regards to transport) is revolting, but then when MPs are parked there for half/more of their time it’s hardly surprising that this occurs.

Great post

I agree with the vast majority of that but have to take exception to all the SE being labelled parasitic and a gigantic carbunkle

Of course, it's a lot more complicated than that. There are loads of massive twats all over but there are plenty of good people down here too.

It's mainly wealthy but there are pockets of extreme deprivation in London, Portsmouth, Hastings even Reading

Where i live it's rural and the locals are mainly yokel types, salt of the earth.

It still retains somewhat of a Wessex feel. Very old

You can feel it on the Ridgeway and at places like Wayland Smithey and the White Horse at Uffington. 

Very different to the North and the cities but not in any way bad or evil

[Moctezuma]

Great post

I agree with the vast majority of that but have to take exception to all the SE being labelled parasitic and a gigantic carbunkle

Of course, it's a lot more complicated than that. There are loads of massive twats all over but there are plenty of good people down here too.

It's mainly wealthy but there are pockets of extreme deprivation in London, Portsmouth, Hastings even Reading

Where i live it's rural and the locals are mainly yokel types, salt of the earth.

It still retains somewhat of a Wessex feel. Very old

You can feel it on the Ridgeway and at places like Wayland Smithey and the White Horse at Uffington. 

Very different to the North and the cities but not in any way bad or evil

 

Completely agree with your post matty I was talking in very general terms, a lot of my mates down here are fairly far toward the left and can't get on the property ladder etc. or who have to stretch from paycheck to paycheck.

 

What I would say though is that even in the areas of serious deprivation down here the Conservatives and their pish policies still get backed by people who don't benefit from them at all.

 

An example would be an ex who was a cancer researcher who thought that capping benefits (which was all the Tories banged on about at that point), would be a good idea. It wasn't until I pointed out to her that it would seriously affect her patient cohort that she realised it might not be so good. Her and her friends saw Labour's name as dirt, so suffocated in their west London conservative backing mind-set were they.

 

Also get patients from seriously hard-up backgrounds who say that the service would be better if "the immigrants and spongers weren't using it" whilst all the time being treated by doctors from all over the world and utilising drugs that they would never be able to afford if they were forced to have their own private insurance.

[Oh Buoy]

 

You Buoy

 

 

Buoys Buoys Buoys

 

 

Wild Buoys

You can lead my campaigns.

[Section_31]

Completely agree with your post matty I was talking in very general terms, a lot of my mates down here are fairly far toward the left and can't get on the property ladder etc. or who have to stretch from paycheck to paycheck.

 

What I would say though is that even in the areas of serious deprivation down here the Conservatives and their pish policies still get backed by people who don't benefit from them at all.

 

An example would be an ex who was a cancer researcher who thought that capping benefits (which was all the Tories banged on about at that point), would be a good idea. It wasn't until I pointed out to her that it would seriously affect her patient cohort that she realised it might not be so good. Her and her friends saw Labour's name as dirt, so suffocated in their west London conservative backing mind-set were they.

 

Also get patients from seriously hard-up backgrounds who say that the service would be better if "the immigrants and spongers weren't using it" whilst all the time being treated by doctors from all over the world and utilising drugs that they would never be able to afford if they were forced to have their own private insurance.

 

I don't think that's a north south thing though, it's a modern Britain thing. Hearing northerners do it is all the more bizarre. 

 

I'm surrounded by people who only went to University because Tony Blair made them a business so they had to start dragnetting spastics. After bumming around cluelessly looking for jobs in good industries (because there are none in the North West, unless you're willing to program SkyNet for 18 grand a year)  they all ended up in public sector jobs like the local civil service or teaching. The fact that affords them enough money to buy a house though means they think they're now entitled to pass judgment over people who don't have a job or don't get paid very well. What fucking heroes they are. 

[Moctezuma]

I don't think that's a north south thing though, it's a modern Britain thing. Hearing northerners do it is all the more bizarre. 

 

I'm surrounded by people who only went to University because Tony Blair made them a business so they had to start dragnetting spastics. After bumming around cluelessly looking for jobs in good industries (because there are none in the North West, unless you're willing to program SkyNet for 18 grand a year)  they all ended up in public sector jobs like the local civil service or teaching. The fact that affords them enough money to buy a house though means they think they're now entitled to pass judgment over people who don't have a job or don't get paid very well. What fucking heroes they are. 

Fair enough, I've found it to be more prevalent in the south due to perhaps a greater lack of social conscious. Though a couple of those I've met who have espoused "I think I should be taxed less"-when they work for companies who have state contracts or work for the state themselves have been from the North.

 

The highlighted bit of your post is hugely salient, if they live in the South east (where there are more private sector jobs for Uni graduates) or Edinburgh (finance) or Aberdeen (oil- though going through a tricky patch at the moment) they would walk into forms of employment that are equivocal to public sector jobs like the local civil service or teaching but in private industry. That degree of ease and entitlement is never reflected upon much and is why they assume it should be easy for everyone to 'get on in life'.

 

Actually had it not been for the Poll tax guinepig and Thatcher’s attempt to annihilate Scottish industry those latter two places may have remained a light shade of blue or yellow on the political map.

[Moctezuma]

Of course the media has a fairly gigantic part to play in all of this as people’s views of what life should be like/what they are entitled to are based upon the consistent stream of rubbish they get fed every day.

 

Programmes like Question time where, the safe media party line is snorted so hard by the panellists I’m surprised their septum is still in one piece by the end, don’t help.

[Section_31]

Of course the media has a fairly gigantic part to play in all of this as people’s views of what life should be like/what they are entitled to are based upon the consistent stream of rubbish they get fed every day.

 

Programmes like Question time where, the safe media party line is snorted so hard by the panellists I’m surprised their septum is still in one piece by the end, don’t help.

 

I've said a lot on here that the media is THE battle, THE problem. It's all concentrated in one place and its rank and file is made up of the same class of people, yet they frame the argument we all see and hear. It's a massive issue. 

[mattyq]

Completely agree with your post matty I was talking in very general terms, a lot of my mates down here are fairly far toward the left and can't get on the property ladder etc. or who have to stretch from paycheck to paycheck.

 

What I would say though is that even in the areas of serious deprivation down here the Conservatives and their pish policies still get backed by people who don't benefit from them at all.

 

An example would be an ex who was a cancer researcher who thought that capping benefits (which was all the Tories banged on about at that point), would be a good idea. It wasn't until I pointed out to her that it would seriously affect her patient cohort that she realised it might not be so good. Her and her friends saw Labour's name as dirt, so suffocated in their west London conservative backing mind-set were they.

 

Also get patients from seriously hard-up backgrounds who say that the service would be better if "the immigrants and spongers weren't using it" whilst all the time being treated by doctors from all over the world and utilising drugs that they would never be able to afford if they were forced to have their own private insurance.

I agree mate, it's bizarre 

The last General Election I was waiting to vote and there was a strange yokel family in front of me. They all had bad Worzel Gummidge accents and looked a bit slow, shall we say. There was the mum, the dad and 2 sons built like brick shithouses but obviously a few sandwiches short of a picnic,

The mum was going onto them about how we always vote Conservative and how they had to put a tick in the box labelled Conservative as if it were there family duty or something.

These poor sods were just voting for the landed gentry class because that's what they always did and everybody else was evil

Voting against themselves and their class as that's all they knew

[Rotpeter]

On phone so not posting whole article, but can thoroughly recommend this from Iannucci:

 

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/04/armando-iannucci-it-s-time-very-british-revolution

Armando Iannucci: It’s time for a very British revolution [1]

 

The main purpose of this article is to make me want to vote by the time I’ve written it. Sorry to have to pare this down to personal basics, but I love politics, I believe passionately that everyone should vote, and I still desperately cling by the fingertips to the ideal that a national democratic debate can do some good to people’s lives. So I really do need a reason to vote, and at the moment I’m not sure I have one. I think it’s out there somewhere.

 

You might feel the same, especially if you’re a first-time voter. I can see you looking at the revolution in Greece and the one brewing in Spain, and then turning back to look at Nigel Farage and thinking: “Really, is that it? A man with a pint of bitter in his hand and in his breast pocket a Top Trumps card about people who are HIV-positive?” I can see you watching the leaders’ debates and thinking: “The conventional parties look – well, so conventional, but why waste a vote on the others unless you’re Scottish?” I hope, by the time I work this thing through my system, to have persuaded myself that there is a point in voting and that this time round there is a glimmer, a faint but tantalising one, that democracy may change for the better if we come out and make our voices heard in significant numbers on 7 May.

 

But first, why the uphill struggle to find a reason? During the independence referendum in Scotland, I was cheered by the sight of a nation fully engaged, 16- and 17-year-olds taking their vote seriously, people passionately arguing on street corners and in pubs and supermarkets about the merits of autonomous revenue collection, currency zones and the obsolescence or otherwise of Trident. Above all, the 84.6 per cent turnout proved that once again politics was alive, that although the big-party system was crumbling, political engagement was stronger than ever. Hence the hope that something significant was about to take place across the rest of the UK, too.

 

But cut to the morning after and the cheesy grin of self-satisfaction at a Scottish job well done immediately fell away. David Cameron came out like a sore winner, and, instead of healing wounds opened by the passionate debate, rubbed them the wrong way with his immediate talk of English votes for English laws. There may have been some cause for him to raise the subject, but not then, not there. It was a cynical and clod-hopping conclusion to a debate that had otherwise inspired passion and idealism. It was a childish shout at the end of a grown-up discussion.

 

The election drew nearer, and so did the boorishness of angry kids at play. Not just the name-calling at PMQs but the sneering, petty-minded headlines about the likes of Ed Miliband’s kitchen and Grant Shapps’s bank account names, signalling that we had come back utterly to how it had always been: a vindictive ground war of insults and gibes in which nothing of substance would be said. When something as stark as the HSBC tax scandal gets reduced in the space of a few days to a discussion of a shadow chancellor’s window-cleaning receipts, you know that the great operation to shut down argument has begun.

 

Within a few short months politics has gone into retreat. The main parties, spooked by the rise of the SNP and Ukip on either flank, have withdrawn to base. Panicky policies about EU membership, immigration caps and “English votes for English laws” are flung out to appease wavering supporters, leaving those on the margins either to vote anyway or be forgotten. The campaign to appeal to Middle England started off all those years ago as a cynical attempt to identify the core rump of voters who decided marginal seats, and woo them. Now it has become a terrified last stand to cling on to that rump. Meantime, those outside the target (Outer England? All of Scotland and Wales?) have been tempted to disengage from Westminster completely.

 

This option has become the default of an increasing number of us. In the last two elections, the number of people who didn’t vote was larger than the numbers who voted for the parties that got into power. Party membership has fallen, while an alternative politics has been played out with e-petitions and online campaigning groups as diverse as UK Uncut, 38 Degrees and Mumsnet. One way or another, the usual Westminster personalities don’t connect any more.

 

Yet here they are on our screens, talking about free schools, and pension pots, and competitive tenders, and pupil premiums, but all these words seem so disconnected from the world of food banks, zero-hours contracts, high energy bills, benefit sanctions, closed libraries, clogged-up A&E units and student debt that is the real economy experienced by so many. Disconnectedness feels like it’s taking a quantum leap, and the noise from Westminster sounds nothing more than the strangled bray of Rump Politics.

 

I call it Rump Politics, because it is so clearly marked by an admission that it is for the few. Party leaders confine themselves to the issues of those who they know will turn out and vote – the elderly, those in business, those with property – and unashamedly ignore the plight of those they know will never come out – the young, the long-term unemployed, the poor. That is why they feel they can get away with proclaiming tax cuts for one group (those who vote) and welfare cuts for another (those who don’t). In 2010, 80 per cent of the over-65s voted: hence all the talk about protecting pensions. In that same election, only 44 per cent of 18-to-24-year-olds voted: hence university tuition fees.

 

You can spot Rump Politics in play whenever a party does something that it knows others will hate, but which it also knows those same others will never come out to vote against. Labour’s campaign mug saying “Controls on immigration” is one (it knows that most first- and second-generation immigrants will probably vote for Labour anyway); Cameron ducking head-to-head debates with Ed Miliband is another (it annoys the media, might get a tabloid newspaper to follow him with a man in a chicken costume, but if it starves Miliband of a platform, who cares?).

 

It’s a calculated contempt against openness and honesty. Rump Politics thrives on keeping silent, saying nothing, giving nothing away, above all not engaging with anyone who your algorithms tell you won’t vote. It’s a contempt perhaps best symbolised by Iain Duncan Smith’s refusal to set out how the Conservatives plan to cut £12bn from the welfare budget. This isn’t just him, it’s not a clumsy misspeak; it’s part of a concerted strategy that can no longer be bothered to conceal itself. Here’s David Gauke, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, as early as 20 March, talking about that same spending plan: “We’ll set it out nearer the time, which will be after the election.”

 

There are two operations of Rump Politics at play here. One is the calculation that alienating the welfare claimant is a risk worth taking. He or she will either vote for another party or, more likely, not vote at all.

 

The second manifestation is less obvious but more deadly: it’s to turn the concept of an election completely on its head. If we see a general election as a collective democratic decision about the future of our government, those who drive Rump Politics do their best to shut down that alarmingly open and unpredictable view by redefining elections as referendums on the past. Hence, it’s all about what has been achieved, or, if you’re in opposition, what has been ruined, while giving as little coherent information as possible about what will be done in the future. The more the parties fighting Rump Politics can get you to focus on what has happened, the less obligation they have to stick to anything too particular in the future. The past is knowable, the future dangerously not.

 

In the last election, the three main parties succeeded so magnificently in drawing a curtain of silence around their future plans for government, that the dominating policies of the past five years have all been ones that simply were not discussed in the election campaign or mentioned in the party manifestos. These policies were: £9,000 university tuition fees, the bedroom tax, the total reorganisation of the NHS and 40 per cent cuts in local government. Put together, it’s a stark programme. Not an iota of it was mentioned during the 2010 campaign. This time round, both the main TV debates were conducted before the parties published their manifestos. No wonder they felt like talks about nothing. Is it any wonder that people feel disconnected from Westminster? If what government does is not discussed with the people first, what is the point of the people engaging in the vote to determine government?

 

But here is where I see the potential for something truly transformative and why I cling on, only just, to a hope that this time things are not going according to the old script. First off, the safety-first strategy of Rump Politics is not winning. In the first few weeks of the campaign, what has dominated the agenda has been the very issues the party leaders have tried to hide. What we remember are Cameron’s unease and inarticulateness when asked questions about food banks and zero-hours contracts, Osborne’s obfuscation when asked about Tory plans for welfare cuts and Miliband’s rather unconvincing attempts to portray himself as tough on immigration. The agenda is not the one foisted on the electorate by the campaign managers: the alternative politics of the internet has become a useful adjunct to the conventional politics of the TV studio. The public has turned into Jeremy Paxman and is refusing to let these questions go away until fully answered. It is as if the possibility of alternative homes for our vote has reinvigorated us and encouraged us to persevere with our inquiries.

 

Second, the old campaign strategies aren’t working. The best example of this is the Tory divide-and-rule of old, putting up posters showing Miliband in the SNP’s pocket. After Nicola Sturgeon’s performance in the leaders’ debate on ITV, the Tory threat of “Vote Labour, get SNP” turned into an unexpectedly positive idea to those who rather liked the idea of a progressive alliance of parties winning the election. Holding out the prospect of another party in power as a threat to distract the electorate from looking at your own agenda has gone the way of the VCR and the Squarial.

 

It’s as if the old Labour-bashing ploys dug up from the 1980s suddenly looked to the electorate like a set of battered and tatty sofas, completely out of place in a much more sophisticated environment. An electorate that is angered by, but not deaf to, politics is keen to listen and has an appetite for grown-up and sophisticated argument. Simple slogans don’t cut it any more: they’re so 1990s.

 

Third, there is no last-minute mass return to the two main parties, nor a mass abandonment of the minor parties. The Cameron policy of retreating from debates and flooding the airwaves with “fringe” groups has woken us up to the possibilities of alternatives that look grown-up and sophisticated rather than eccentric and doomed. It has reassured us that a multiparty system is not a madhouse. Threatening the electorate with a rainbow alliance of parties no longer works as a threat when that looks both credible and appealing.

 

Fourth, and this is important if you believe in progressive politics, Ukip has found its natural limit. Its poll numbers are simply not rising. Nigel Farage, the man obsessed with setting caps on numbers, has reached his own natural cap of support. Yes, some may find his arguments over immigration numbers and European bureaucracy appealing, but he also seems to have invigorated those who oppose his views. So, while the main parties may try to ape his “tough” stance on immigration, others feel emboldened to stand up and confidently outline the benefits that immigration has brought to this country’s culture and economy. Ukip has tried to simplify the arguments: a sophisticated electorate has asked to hear something more nuanced.

 

The reasons I have outlined give me some confidence that Rump Politics may not win the day. That while we’ve been abandoned as an electorate, we have grown into something hardier, something that no longer feeds off the binary views of a conventional system. But we have to come out in numbers. We have to work at it. If we want to make it absolutely clear that the British voter is sick of pat phrases, simple solutions, focused bribery and panic thinking, then we have to keep pestering and badgering, keep asking for more detailed answers.

 

We also have to vote confidently with our heart for whoever comes closest in our constituency to echoing what we feel. If that leads to a messy, disruptive result on 8 May, then so be it. If it forces the controlling elite of Westminster leaders to see they no longer have control, then great. It could be a very British revolution: peaceful but determined, thoughtful yet unique.

[Dr Nowt]

Good man, cheers.

[Rotpeter]

Good man, cheers.

It helped crystallize a vague uneasiness I've had for a while now. I'd be going full Tooth if I was still over there. The degree of the Labour sell-out surpasses even The Cure's release of Love Cats.