YouGov points to disproportionate swing in Wales
March 5th, 2010
CON 29% (21.4)
LAB 37% (42.7)
LD 12% (18.4)
PC 14% (12.6)
But the Tories are down on January
A new YouGov poll of Welsh Westminster voting intentions points to a 6.6% swing to the Tories since the May 2005 general election and the possibility of eight gains. The comparisons above are from the last general election.
But in spite of all this the poll shows a significant weakening of the Tory position there since the last such poll in January. They are down 3, Labour are up 2 with the LDs and PC down 1% each.
The swing in the Principality is more than two points greater than in Britiain as a whole and is on the same scale as last night’s YouGov poll of 60 marginal seats by the firm for Channel 4. The seats selected for that survey did not include any from Wales.
Given the concentration of marginals amongst the 40 Welsh seats this should be positive news for the blue team. What we don’t know is whether the Welsh marginals are behaving any differently from this.
Mike Smithson
MessageSpace Advertising
1st
Where’s the detail?
Quelle surprise, swing indicative of a 40/30/20/10 result
Whouldda thunk it?
Re. YouGov:
Yebbut what were the Unweighted values??!
Clegg brings up body armour and helicopters.
Also effectivly saying that Brown not being completely honest on funding
Well done that man
Here we go:
http://www.yougov.co.uk/extranets/ygarchives/content/pdf/ITV%20Wales_03-Mar-2010.pdf
Mike - I think you have read Anthony’s comment wrongly; Arfon, Ceredigion and Ynys Mon are surely likely Plaid gains. Also Brecon is held by the Lib Dems….
FPT- 486 “We’ll all be watching from behind the sofa. It could drive you mad.
Perhaps a healthy pb distraction would be to set up some interesting bets around the events.
e.g.
Who will say “deficit” most?
Will anyone explain who that third bloke is?”
It is going to be really tense for party activists, the fate of entire seats, perhaps the entire election could be decided by a party leader accidentally saying something daft. If Nick Clegg had been asked what the state pension was in the middle of a live TV debate, it would have been a disaster for him, and that sort of thing could happen to any of them.
Two and a half per cent swing to Labour in two months.
Wow.
on topic, why are Libs down so much?
Wow….taxi for team yellow.
clegg good valid points sky news interview kate burley
comment in moderation (my fault misstyped e mail address) - try again
on topic, why are Libs down so much?
The Welsh seem to be much more keen to vote Tory than the Scots.
clegg good valid points sky news interview kate burley
If the Tories get near 29pc in Wales on polling day I’ll eat my hat.
FPT SeanT put it very succinctly.
“Gordonomics was the War. He destroyed us. He was the Luftwaffe and now we have all been sent to Coventry.”
Bravo.
Brecon and Radnorshire is not Labour held - are you saying they’d pick that up from the Lib Dems?
I know Cardiff and parts of north wales quite well, I have family down there, and spent many happy holidays on Ynys Mon. I believe there is an ex Tory standing on Ynys Mon who could dent our hopes there badly, I don’t think we will take it, but it could be a good future prospect.
Seriously bad news for the LDs.
Why are they doing so badly in Wales? It can’t ALL be Lembit?
You’d get good odds on the Tories winning Ceredigion Mike. Pile in!
HA the Lib Dems are getting cained in Scotland and wales!
Nick said “Apparently Populus and YouGov are now doing CCHQ private polling:
http://blogs.wsj.com/iainmartin/2010/03/05/tories-hire-yougov-to-do-new-private-polling/”
Yougov seem to be shaping the agenda. Perhaps Cons are looking to out bid Labour and buy the agenda
Are YouGov doing an unhealthy amount of polling for this stage of the game?
15 - “If the Tories get near 29pc in Wales on polling day I’ll eat my hat.”
by BenM March 5th, 2010 at 12:48 pm
We need to get this on the list of recorded wagers and we will need photgraphic evidence of the consumption of said hat.
9 tim - Just shows how quickly things can swing. In either direction, of course.
Overall, this poll seems consistent with other polls, and confirms what we already thought: the Conservatives are doing better Wales (and, more importantly, in the Midlands) than elsewhere.
22. Not for their bank balance!
22: I do wish we had more polling from other firms…
15. What makes you think they won’t Ben?
15. Rod Crosby has pointed out that since the Sixties, Wales has gradually been shifting from Labour to Conservatives. So, some degree of outperformance in Wales is no surprise.
umm, are Lib Dems down 1% or 6%?
Gordon Brown was asked if he was aware that the Attorney General had changed his opinion substantially before giving war the legal go-ahead.
He answered, “I wasn’t aware in any detail.”
I think that means that he didn’t actually read the earlier longer equivocal legal advice, not that he was unaware of what was one of the most titanic problems bothering the government in the run-up to war.
In another moment he was asked about the legal advice and said that he knew that the permanent secretary (at Defence) and the military chief had required clear (legal) guidance.
They required that because what they’d got wasn’t clear.
You came away with the impression that the Prime Minister knew what was going on.
Mr Brown’s hands moved around his leather briefing folder repeatedly as the session started this morning. As he left the inquiry for the lunchtime break he made a point of turning to the public gallery (not completely full, about 10 seats empty) behind him to say “hello” twice and smile twice.
The faces I could see did not crack and returned a stony stare.
http://blogs.channel4.com/snowblog/2010/03/05/browns-smiles-to-the-public-gallery-meet-stony-stares/
It is strange that the Geert Wilders visit is not being reported anywhere on the front page of the BBC website.
31, has he been declared a non-person?
Heavily prepared. Heavily made-up. Gordon Brown was so eager to make his defence that he strode into the Iraq inquiry before the committee itself had settled comfortably in their seats.
Again and again he spelt out his explanation of his own role often ignoring questions to the evident frustration of those asking.
…
As for those missing weapons of mass destruction he had believed the information he had been given by the intelligence services .
Financially he had given the arm ed forces everything they could have wanted and what’s more he wished he had managed to persuade the Americans to take reconstruction more seriously.
It was only when Sir Roderic Lyne, the skilful former diplomat, pushed him on whether he had been told by Tony Blair what the then prime minister had told President Bush did Gordon Brown stumble.
Once again he avoided the question, so blatantly that this time the audience broke into laughter. Yet throughout this morning Gordon Brown will feel he has not made a mistake.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson/2010/03/gordon_brown_at.html
Mirror hack admits that Labour didn’t fund equipment properly post invasion - but doubts whether the enquiry will dig this out enough
The relatively small number of constituencies in Wales, and the four-party system (or, to be more precise, a collection of various different two- and three-party systems) mean that there is little point in doing an opinion poll in “Wales” and then trying to extrapolate some sort of uniform swing or adjusted weighted swing.
Rather than having a survey of 1,000 people across Wales, it would be more useful to have 100 people in each of the key 10 or 15 marginal constituencies - and ignore the rest. It would be a bit like having the polls in individual states in USA presidential elections. I predict that Plaid Cymru will do its traditional result of not quite managing to win all five target seats at the same time, and that Lib Dem will hold Ceredigion.
30 - “The faces I could see did not crack and returned a stony stare.”
Our dear leader not loved?
“… and Ynys Mon, Arfon and Ceredigion from Plaid.”. I think what he meant was, that those three seats would be PC gains from Labour / LD. The conservatives are not in contention in Arfon or Ceredigion.
Much has been said about Brown’s stealth taxes whilst Chancellor but looking back now was his biggest blunder the decision to scrap corporation tax for small companies making profits of £10K back in the 1990’s. As an accountant at the time we advised all our husband and wife partnerships to incorporate into Limited Companies. A partnership with a profit of £22,000 would incorporate and once hubby and Mrs had paid themselves £6,000 salaries (covered by tax free allowance)the company had no tax to pay either. The Treasury must have lost BILLIONS…and this went on for 3 or 4 years !!
by Davey Tibs March 5th, 2010 at 12:56 pm
24 - Richard.
Yes they can shift fast.
And we both know what can happen when a leaders ratings start a serious slide.
Which in itself is know becoming part of the narrative.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23812522-david-cameron-slips-in-personality-polls.do
31. Visit? Visit where?
Didn’t the Tories have their best result in Wales since 1918 back in June? Given that, this poll isn’t really surprising.
LOL
“Telegraph.co.uk commenter Bob Lawson says: “Only a few minutes into Brown’s evidence, and already I’m shouting at him to answer the questions, not the ones he hears in his mind.”"
37 - IR35 - did it raise any revenue, or did it just send a lot of jobs to EDS (India), who lobbied hard for it, with the resulting loss of jobs especially in the IT industry?
Peter Kellner admits that YG have a problem with the Lib Dems and Mark Senior always points out Lib Dems are under sampled in YG polls.
Have I summed up his testimony accurately ?
The US and UK wanted to make an example of Iraq and they had to do it quickly before the UN stopped us !
Have I summed up his testimony accurately ?
The US and UK wanted to make an example of Iraq and they had to do it quickly before the UN stopped us !
Incidentally in case it hasn’t been posted. Here is the daily tracker for yesterday:
http://www.yougov.co.uk/extranets/ygarchives/content/pdf/TheSun-results_04.03-trackers.pdf
Same as ever. Labour IDs uplifted , Conservative IDs cut. Where have all the Labour supporters gone?
41, but it’s only the fairydust pixies in Mr. Brown’s mind that ask the *right* questions, Mr. Floater.
42 Kristin - IR35 caused massive disruption and administrative costs, and raised tuppence-hapenny. A classic New Labour measure:
http://www.pcg.org.uk/cms/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5546:pcg-exposes-the-truth-of-ir35s-pitiful-tax-take&catid=745:pcg-news&Itemid=1053
Naughty Guido:
http://order-order.com/2010/03/05/friday-caption-contest-24/
42 IR35 only applies to companies being used as intermediaries…the £10K band applied to all sorts of traders from plumbers to IT consultants…we couldn’t believe it..and nor could our clients
Further to 48: When looking at the projections in Darling’s budget look at the figures for IR35.
Target: £220m per year
Actual: £1.5m per year
Beneficiaries: Accountants
43 - I never get asked political questions in youwotguv polls, so perhaps its not surprising.
48 don’t forget the riduculous measure they brought in before IR35 which was to tax dividends at some obscure marginal rate…madness!
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL
Sky asks a member of public (bereaved mother) about Brown
“oh god doesn’t he just go on”
“never answers a question”
“tried to do it on a make do and mend basis - dint want t ospend money”
wonder how gordo’s ratings gonna go tim?
Think they can go much lower?
Will roger call her a shit?
51…nuffin wrong with accountants :o)
48 - yes I know, I was affected by it and the overall affect in my case was that I took a permanent job which resulted in the treasury receiving less than was previously the case.
54 - apologies for sticky keyboard
“didn’t want to spend”….
38 It’s noteable how quite a lot of commentators find it very hard to distinguish between ratings of the party leaders in the country as a whole, and ratings of the party leaders in seats where Labour had an 11% lead in 2005.
If one surveyed a bunch of seats where the Conservatives led by a similar margin, in 2005, I’m sure that Cameron’s ratings would be absolutely stellar, but it wouldn’t tell you very much about what the country as a whole thought about him.
O/T (except that the economy should be the ONLY topic stupid…)
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article7050935.ece
Factory gate inflation now stands at an annualised 4.1% It’s hard to see how base rates can stay at 0.5% if the govt are serious about inflation staying at or around 2%. Oh hang on…
Increasingly it seems the govt has a time horizon which ends utterly at May 6th, they don’t give a monkey’s what happens after that.
WAKE UP TORIES and convince everyone how cr@p Labour are - surely it can’t be that difficult?
Worse than the 1970s:
http://burningourmoney.blogspot.com/2010/03/debt-and-taxes.html
54. “Will roger call her a shit?”
What do you think?
Come on Dave.
Don’t be vague, time to sack Hague.
The Tories were plunged into fresh controversy over Lord Ashcroft’s donations today after it emerged he may have avoided paying £2million in tax on the money he brought back to Britain to donate to the party.
The revelations leave David Cameron facing damaging questions over his relationship with William Hague, who as Tory leader in 2000 lobbied for Lord Ashcroft to be awarded his peerage.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1255348/William-Hague-pressure-Lord-Ashcrofts-Belize-tax-dodge.html#ixzz0hJ7a6PdV
52 I get asked about brands, and vasectomies.
50, as an IT consultant I was caught by IR35 having been forced to set up a ltd company in the first place, otherwise you could not get a contract as the clients wouldn’t touch you with a bargepole.
Just caught up with OGH’s appearance on Newsnight.
How much did you have to bribe them to not film the top of your head in the close-up, Mike?
61 tim - ‘Billionaire can afford tax advisers’ shocker.
What a load of tosh. Are they suggesting Lord Mittal doesn’t take tax advice? Or Blair? Or Lord Sainsbury? Or John Terry? Even Alistair Darling did, at our our expense as it happens.
I really don’t think people, even Mail readers, are that stupid.
65, tim is the Baldrick of pb.com
Yes…I have never understood why IT companies would only deal with Limited Companies…I know IBM did this…I guess you paid yourself via a notional salary and dividends - of course HMRC lost out on National Insurance contributions by this
‘It’s noteable how quite a lot of commentators find it very hard to distinguish between ratings of the party leaders in the country as a whole, and ratings of the party leaders in seats where Labour had an 11% lead in 2005.’
It’s either a) deliberate conflation of the two or b)simply a desperate desire to run with what they think is a piece of info that supports their prior view. Just another example of the pathetic state of journalism.
62 -
I get a lot of brands stuff, but occasionally some social attitudes stuff too.
67: To avoid any chance of them beng deemed an employee.
68 Perhaps. I also think that many political commentators don’t actually understand polling very well. For me, this site, and Anthony Wells’s (and the old site he ran prior to 2005) were a real education on the subject.
In the light of recent developments I have made arrangements to move my entire fortune, including any rightfully belonging to the British tax authorities, to the free and open country of Zimbabwe where Robert Mugabe is set to give true Tories such as myself a warm and cordial welcome and has assured me that any “critics” of my probity will be assured of a severe “talking-to” by the forces of his supporters. I am convinced that his reputation as a bloodthirsty and murderous despot is a figment of media disinformation and his pledge of support for Dave Cameron shows him to be a man of impeccable judgement and integrity as indeed am I and William.
43 - I never get asked political questions in youwotguv polls, so perhaps its not surprising.
by Tabman March 5th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
Tell them you read the Sun, are 25, and never voted. !!!!!
75 Sean F. What news from Luton South ??
65. My mp took tax advice, and then charged it to the fees office.
Its a bit of a silly story, anyone who does anything other then have a single job with a single employer on PAYE with no other assets, gets tax advice.
They would be stupid not to. If you rent out a house, you should take tax advice, if you work for yourself, you should take tax advice, if you have assets that can be taxed for IHT you should take tax advice. If you have two jobs, you should take tax advice.
70 MD “tim is the Baldrick of pb.com”
Not quite.
Baldrick = Cunning Plan
Tim = Cunning Stunt (or something like that)
68 - How many news cycles do you think Hague can survive?
And I know you’ll say “He’s popular with the grassroots” but so would be Churchills corpse, similar work rate and a better strategic sense.
75 - I would certainly never have realised that you need to look beyond the numbers published in the papers to get answers.
I assumed, as do most people I’m sure, that if it says Con 38/Lab 32 that that was the percentage of respondents that would vote for those parties.
81: Seeing as there isn’t a story, theres hardly a newscycle.
Just got this joke on an e mail
A driver is stuck in a traffic jam on the motorway.
Nothing has moved for half an hour when suddenly a man knocks on the window.
The driver rolls down his window and asks, - ‘What’s going on?’
‘Terrorists down the road have kidnapped Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling, David Miliband and Jack Straw.
They’re asking for a £10 million ransom or they’re going to douse them with petrol and set them on fire. We’re going from car to car, taking up a collection.’
The driver asks, ‘How much is everyone giving, on average?’
‘Most people are giving about a gallon.’
————————-
What was that about being laughed at????
67 - having to pay both employers and employees NIC meant paying a lower salary, not necessarily notional, and take dividends in order to cover that and cost of running a ltd company. That also allowed you to keep paying a salary, and tax, even when you didn’t have a contract. Large body shops like EDS, didn’t like independent contractors and lobbied hard for changes and won, their profits as well as a lot of jobs go abroad of course. EPIC FAIL by HMRC and Red Dawn. Oh and guess who gets a lot of large government IT contracts that overrun and aren’t delivered.
I’ll end there as completely off topic.
Most of the swings are due to the 4th quarter growth figures. A negative growth figure at the end of April will surely put the Conservatives 10%+ ahead again
71 DT
I understood it to be some latest labour law bollox whereby undercertain interpretations of EU directives if you are a self-employed sub-contractor the contrracting company could be liable for a lot of your additional costs as you would be treated like a de facto employee.
If you are employed by a company ie you are a company contracting with another company then there is no doubt as to which company (you) has to pay your bills.
Sorry to be a pedant, but Plaid are actually UP 1 from the January poll, not down.
81 - Do you REALLY think Hague will be forced out over something that is totally legal?
The more times Peter Mandelson comes on to say Tories are fiscally naughty, the better.
Tim it doesn’t matter how much you whitter on about Hague and Ashcroft and Cameron, the public doesn’t care and the media caravan is moving on.
81, it doesn’t matter, you crazy fool. These stories don’t register with a public. For Hague, they’re like alpha radiation on skin, they just bounce right off.
Now, underfunding soldiers because you’re a mean-spirited, tight-fisted, unpatriotic bastard, that’s like beta radiation. It’ll screw you up badly.
78 Well, it all seems rather interesting.
The Yougov marginals poll suggests the seat is neck and neck between Labour and the Conservatives. However, I think that Margaret Moran’s behaviour will generate a swing over and above that (just as I think Kelvin Hopkins’ behaviour will benefit his chances in Luton North).
However, the Lib Dems are also very much in contention, and Esther Rantzen definitely looks as though she’ll poll a fair-sized vote (apparently, she does get mentioned quite often to canvassers).
There’s a good chance that the winner will only get about 30% or so of the vote.
81 Hague is safe. This is Andy Coulson all over again, isn’t it? A non-story fluffed up by Labour, the Guardian and the Indy, which Labour/LibDem activists think is terribly important but no-one else does.
The ironic thing is that this time they actually had a (small) point: the commitment given by Lord Ashcroft does seem to have been mishandled, or at least misunderstood, by some of those involved. That is the only valid criticism in the whole affair, but it has got lost in all the noise. Maybe they think it is just too arcane to register.
More details about the Obama-people now working for the Tories
…Signing on to work for Cameron is Washington’s Squier, Knapp, Dunn Communications — that’s Dunn, as in Anita, the short-lived White House communications director who once named Mao Zedong as one of her “favorite political philosophers” — the other was Mother Teresa — and who went after Fox News with unmatched ferocity. (The same Anita Dunn whose husband is now Obama’s White House counsel.) Also on board is Bill Knapp, who worked on Obama’s campaign, as well as on the campaigns of Bill Clinton, Al Gore and John Kerry.
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/campaign/85129-obama-insiders-to-work-in-the-upcoming-uk-election-for-the-tories
as someone reknown for detail to numbers, brown is being a bit evasive.
81) Tim I think you have reached an all time low. How dare you talk so ill of Sir Winston Churchill (Voted greatest Great Britain of the 20th Century)
Who wants to open a book on the period of time that expires before Gordon gives a straight answer ?
82 I hope you don’t think I was having a dig at you. I find your posts very well-informed.
Employment in US falls again
Several press types (on Sky) saying Gordo getting off lightly re questions (as in being allowed to not answer)
53. This was the corporation tax personal allowance which resulted in tens of thousands of small businesses going ltd, and not paying a penny tax on the first £20,000 of income (they all, also had their wife as joint owner and joint recipient of profit).
As I understand it Brown was warned of the consequences, what he created was a gigantic incentive to create shell companies. That, along with IR35 means that high earners, contractors in places like Sellafield, who are in reality earning about £130,000 a year, pay practically no tax, the money goes into the ltd company, they pay themselves minimum wage, and get to uplift all their costs in a way a paye employee wouldnt be able to, and dump £80,000 a year into their pension fund.
97: I don’t think I have that long to live…
87. Yes, but it is also a means to pay close to no tax whatsoever. Far from closing loopholes, this last decade has seen huge ones open up.
The Professional Contractors Group (originally formed to campaign against IR35) used to keep a count of the results of members IR35 and S660A appeals. The last figues I’ve seen are 1462 wins to 6 losses (2009 figures I believe).
92 Sean F. Thanks for that. I’m hearing much the same, except the Lib Dems appear less in contention. I can only hope so, else I’ll have the yellow peril bordering the Herts estate !! …. Watford I might just cope with but Luton South !!
Rantzen appears to have a fair wing behind her and she certainly looks like a tasty trading bet.
What happened to the Lib Dems in Wales?
510.How many senior officers, men who have in the past risked their lives for our country do you know? How many of those that you know are “incompetent, small-minded pompous toads”
What is your evidence base?
As for “billions wasted on super modern fighters”….I believe they were commissioned at the height of the cold war. The threat was of a Soviet attack in NW Europe, did your foresight enable you to predict the demise of the Soviet Union, the rise of radical Islam & the need for UK forces to be sent to the Middle East?
Afghanistan and Iraq were “caused by a complete lack of strategy” The Prime Minister & the relevant committee decide aims, provide funds etc. We don’t live in a dictatorship, if the civilian elected government wanted to change policy/strategy they could so order.
Based on your final few lines, you are about as unlikely a swing voter as I have ever met.
“Brown tells Iraq inquiry post-war planning should have been better”.
And in other news today, his post-recession planning appears to be much worse.
102 notme
Yes, you would have thought “joined up government” would have spotted that !
Still at least nobody’s rushing through ill-thought through legislation on electoral reform.
100: They still do. One of the main benefit of having a small company now (although much less than in the past) is that dividends can be paid to make most use of the basic rate band of both husband and wife. In addition most small business pay only salary up to the personal allowance, and the rest of money as dividends, which saves a lot of tax.
HMRC have been making noises about it for years, they haven’t been able to stop it yet for various reasons.
These are each of the 3 main parties greatest leaders in my opinion.
1) Labour- Clement Atlee
2) Conservatives- Winston Churchill.
3) Liberals- I’m split between William Gladstone and Herbert Asquith.
103: In the past few years, the number of enquires I’ve seen has shunk an awful lot. HMRC simply don’t have the manpower they used to (and the ones which are there seem to be pretty ignorant of GAAP and tax conventions as a whole).
104 I think the Lib Dems are also putting a lot of effort into Bedford, following the Mayoral election.
On Topic.
Here’s a former Welsh Secretary.
Yes, William Hague is back in the wars, though it’s been a while for the former Tory leader, so famously flattened by the Blair juggernaut. He has steadily re-built some credibility in the interim.
But ten years ago he might have done something a bit silly. He nominated the then plain old Michael Ashcroft, successful security magnate, for a peerage. One little problem - he forgot to ask Ashcroft a minor point about his tax status, but as the eager donor was one of the few people to pump used bank notes into the Tory slot machine in the 90s, that would have just got in the way, right?
Being based for the large part of his year in Belize, Ashcroft is what is known as a ‘non-dom’. No tax here, little tax abroad, Sunday Times Rich List amounts of wedge in the bank. Sounds great, only now, with the Tory lead being nibbled away and Cameron unable to halt the slide, the news that Hague only knew very recently of Ashcroft’s status has finally dribbled out on Radio 4’s The World Tonight and is damaging. Like a sixpence in a Christmas pudding, the juicy admission that Ashcroft had negotiated special terms around his peerage was buried in a master class of obfuscation. It gives the impression that Hague had been played a fool. If the cap fits.
Lessons
Tackle bad news head on rather than wait for it to dribble out
Credibility can take a long time to establish but only a short time to damage
http://www.prweek.com/uk/channel/Media/article/988553/Friday-Drop-Bad-week-William-Hague/
110 Palmerston was the best Liberal leader.
113 - actually thats off topic.
how many does mike let you have in a day now?
Something in your post that you should have learnt from smearleader
“Credibility can take a long time to establish but only a short time to damage”
106. Rule no.1 in the PB.com troll spotting book is ‘anyone who describes themselves as a floating voter almost certainly isn’t’
114 - “Pitt the Elder!”*
*Simpsons quote.
FPT On Budget
Darling is likely to deliver a budget which promises to reduce the deficit at a scale acceptable to the markets. The problems will be with the targeting of the cuts and tax rises and the proportion of deficit reduction that will be attributed to growth.
Tax rises will be heavily loaded onto the “richest 5%” of voters. Spending cuts will be announced that protect “frontline services” (even though there will be abundant evidence in the public sector of stealth cuts of frontline services already taking place). The benefits from growth will be optimistic but not implausible.
With the electorate being told that “whoever wins the election, we are facing cuts of unprecedented severity - worse than Thatcher. These cuts will be unavoidable - enforced by the market - and exceedingly painful” [SeanT], the budget will appear less draconian than feared. Almost comfortable.
The markets will be sceptical but not openly hostile. A little weakening of the pound and a few basis points on gilts but no currency crisis or gilt strike. The mood will be “this is not what we wanted but if nothing better is on offer we’ll take it”.
This may drag the Tories into making fisking attacks: take each line and either add or subtract a bit. This would blunt the Tory attack by smothering it in detail. The electorate’s understanding and attention will be lost.
A far better line of attack from the Tories would be to set out a long term and plan for restructuring the economy. For boosting the proportion of private sector activity in the economy and reducing the dependence on the state sector. To point out how and why Labour got us into the current economic mess over a period of 10 years: house price inflation, easy credit, over borrowing etc. To attack Labour on credibility: how reliable have Brown’s and Darling’s growth figures been in the past?
The negative message should be that this is a panic budget, an election saver, totally at odds with the way Labour have managed the economy during their term of office. The positive messages are that no Conservative government would have allowed the country to have been hit by a recession so hard (cf. Canada, Australia etc); that rebuilding the economy on the rocks of sound finance is the right route forward; that transferring resources from the state to the private sector will yield higher growth and less risk.
The battle over the budget will be much closer and harder than we have all been expecting on pb.com. I believe the Tories will win it but only by a small margin. The budget battle will however turn the election war and deliver a decisive victory. It will be “The Battle for Britain II”.
Last thread
“How many senior officers, men who have in the past risked their lives for our country do you know? How many of those that you know are “incompetent, small-minded pompous toads”
What is your evidence base?”
I read the news. The military are supposed to be public servants, I judge them on results. I do not need to know them to be able to judge them, it’s bigotry to imply otherwise.
The fact is that Gordon Brown does not decide on the number of helicopters that the generals should buy, he’s not expected to because that’s not his job.
113 tim - Hard to take seriously an author who thinks being a non-dom has something to do with ‘Being based for the large part of his year in Belize’ and leads to ‘No tax here’.
Lessons: Get the facts right before jumping to a conclusion. Credibility can take a long time to establish but only a short time to damage
113. How is that on topic. The topic is the welsh voting intentions poll not a party political broadcast on how Labour have mucked up the nations finances so much they now need to divert attention from their policies and come up with pointless sleeze stories.
What are Labours policies Tim?
Have Labour got any?
110. But Churchill was a war leader, and he led the nation (and a national government) more then he lead the Conservatives. Thatcher has to be the Conservatives greatest leader…
119 - see 106.
Of course the rush to incorporate when this came in also meant that the existing “Goodwill” of the partnership / business could be in effect sold to the company by the individual by means of a loan to the company. This attracted a small amount of Capital Gains Tax at the time but generated a large directors loan in the company which could be drawn down in subsequent years - tax free.
Obama appears to be on the verge of a complete reversal on the issue of civilian trials for 9/11 plotters such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/04/obama-aides-recommend-military-trial/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+foxnews%252Fpolitics+%2528Text+-+Politics%2529
After months of insisting on the necessity of civilian trials, he now appears prepared to send them back to military court.
In other news, it looks like the current governor of New York may resign within days amidst a series of scandals currently being investigated by multiple law enforcement agencies. When asked whether he’d still be in office a week from now, Paterson didn’t even answer. That would make two New York governors resigning within two years.
119 SW
but his job is to provide the money for the helicopters, and he doesn’t.
115 - And how many silly comments off topic and empty on Chilcot have you posted today?
Anyhow, off out for the afternoon.
Enjoy your soldiers shroud waving.
16 - BenM. The Tories, before 97, usually got between 1/4 and 1/3 of the Welsh vote, so I don’t see why 29% should be outlandish.
30 - Sean Fear. Rod Crosby and the Labour-Tory swing in Wales since the 60s. No. This is a misreading of the data. There’s been a long-term swing from Labour to others, not directly to Tory.
10 - Floater / 20 - Wibbler. Why are the LDs down so much? Well, there are many things I could say but my mother always said if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.
Seriously, the regional breakdowns are calamitous for the LDs in Mid & West, where they hold 3 seats. This has been a pattern in all YouGov’s Welsh polls. Time will tell whether this is a regional-breakdown-unreliability problem or a Lib Dem problem.
46 - Lib Dems undersampled by Yougov. Maybe, maybe not. But if anyone in an idle moment would like to look at LD performance in Welsh council byelections since 2008 (are they Mark Senior’s preferred measure these days?!) the results are hilarous.
And just in case anyone missed it
- Plaid are up one since the January poll, not down.
On topic
Labour seems to have recovered slightly in Wales but are far from the dominate position they used to be in Wales.
127 - ogh has not seen fit to class me in the same category as you
Thank god - wouldn’t be able to live with myself
118 Good analysis, Seth. You certainly identify the dangers for the Tories.
Having said that, I think the headlines might be ‘Darling the Axeman’ or ‘Darling savages middle classes’ or maybe both. In other words, the response from Osborne may not need to be too sophisticated.
brown now trying to say its the army’s fault if things went wrong
William Hill’s spokesman Graham Sharpe.
“Punters are backing Labour and a Hung Parliament but won’t touch the Tories at the moment with the result that their odds are out to levels they last touched almost two years ago.”
http://www.casinobeacon.co.uk/news-articles/news/2010-03/tories-050310.htm
132 BD
the buck stops anywhere but here
132 - yep I just heard that, as did Mcgabble earlier on Sky
Moral compass on the blink I guess
128 Thanks
129 Once upon a time, Labour had 30% leads across Wales.
Contrary to ramblings on here, Brown looks assured and well on top of his brief.
it was the naughty boys with the guns they didnt tell me anything honest !!
I hope the press nail him for dumping on the army
Brown - “whatever the cost we would meet it”
Except
Body armour
Ammo
Pain relief
helicopters
Amongst others
112 Sean F. Indeed so. I think around 4/1 presently which IMO is excellent value. If only we had a decent Bedford pundit to point us in the correct direction ?!?
128. Its interesting that we see a very similar pattern between LibDem performance in Wales and in Scotland. Is this a special factor in that a Nationalist option means they don’t get the same protest vote as elsewhere? The national polls are not good for the Lib Dems but better than Wales or Scotland. They are going to have to do a remarkable job of concentrating their strength in their existing seats. The subsamples for the South West (usual caveats) are not that clever either.
137
mounting your lawyer in public doesn’t sound the act of a sane man.
119.He did decide how many helicopters to purchase, he was the Chancellor, Geoff Hoon gave evidence to that effect.
As for you point about senior officers being “incompetent, small-minded pompous toads”
I asked for you evidence…your evidence is this?
I read the news. The military are supposed to be public servants, I judge them on results. I do not need to know them to be able to judge them, it’s bigotry to imply otherwise.
Are you serious? That’s it? Men who have risked their lives & continue to do so, how would you compare to anyone of them I wonder.
General Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank, who led the Armed Forces from 1997 to 2001, told The Times: “Not fully funding the Army in the way they had asked . . . undoubtedly cost the lives of soldiers. He should be asked why he was so unsympathetic towards defence and so sympathetic to other departments.”
Just got another begging email from Blunkett using Ashcroft’s millions as a reason for supporters to cough up for Labour.
That’s 5 in about 10 days.
142 - Brown has f*cked the whole country, whats one more person between friends?
oh god he is Booooooooooooooooooring
212 million here blah blah blah 400 million there blah blah blah
But you cut the helicopter budget didnt you McClown
O/T but with betting implications on next Labour leader:
“Derek Simpson, Britain’s most powerful trade union leader, says that the unions shouldn’t talk to the Tories and anoints Ed Miliband as Labour’s next leader”
http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2010/03/labour-simpson-union-interview
125. Oh dear, another policy failure by ‘The One’ which will annoy his supporters while doing nothing to appease his critics.
145 Plato
Labour have no money. Their fairwaether friends have all seen the way the wind is blowing and won’t be coughing up this time.
paulwaugh
OMG Brown makes iraqinquiry sound like a Budget. Tricksy use of ‘rising budgets’, rattling off billions and billions, steamroller delivery
glenoglaza
But Hoon (then def Sec), Tebbit (Perm sec MOD) and Lord Guthrie (ex-CDS in The Times today) say precisely the opposite to Brown
Gordon is asserting again and again that no requests were turned down and no soldiers didn’t have what they needed.
I can’t help feeling that this is going to come back and bite him via anecdotal evidence.
141. With SNP in power in Scotland and PC also part of the coalition in Wales, the Welsh and Scottish LDs perhaps haven’t had much attention being the smaller of several opposition parties.
They must hope that the context of a Westminster election, especially with the leaders’ debates, will reverse this effect.
The Telegraph ‘Are you convinced tracker’ now well into the red.
Just caught the catch up of the morning part of the enquiry down in the lobby. Broon is evasive and dour. It’s obvious to everyone now how much he hates people questioning his gospel. It’s going to be even more evident during the TV debates.
I think it is an absolutely clear that Aschroft-gate is done now. The news is dead in the water and he’s in the clear with EC. Chilcot will dominate today’s news, and the hard questioning is yet to come. The military spending reviews and MoD budgets will come under increased scrutiny in the afternoon of which he had full control over as chancellor. Hopefully the inquiry members go hostile and put him on the spot. If he loses it on air he’s finished. I hope they needle him until he starts booming and shouting back answers.
BBCLauraK
Brown pressed on changes to MOD budget - PM says it rose and rose, but MOD former boss said changes meant in effect 1 billion less #iraq
151 Brown just can’t stop himself, can he?
154
Dream on.
I think as he gets more tired he will continue to get angrier, he’s going to slip up.
Brown saying he had nothing to do with any of the tough decisions, and also saying he gave them more money than they wanted. The man is in denial.
152. Yes the LibDems have fallen off badly since the end of their coalition with Labour in Scotland. I thought it was because that adminstration was such a disaster but you may have identified a simpler reason. It does look as if the LibDems have more riding on the debates than anyone else. The risk is they end up being largely ignored.
Brown just loves those statistics doesn’t he…looking at him, I thought he was gonna orgasm reading out the stats re “resource accounting”…but it was actually just a smile
150 - oglaza is not impressed it seems.
Car crash for Gordon in my opinion (even with soft soap questioning)
Expect much smearing from tim, gabble and Roger tonight / tomorrow
Again, think of him at the debates - he is awful now and will be awful then.
In a withering assessment of the “doomed” state of the military, the recently retired Lt Gen Sir Graeme Lamb said that the SAS had been denied even Vietnam-era equipment that could have saved lives.
Resources remained insufficient to fight current and future conflicts, with much of the Army’s equipment “either broken or lacking”, he warned.
from the Telegraph..
151 i bloody hope so, having seen first hand what the military budget was like under brown the first week in office 1997 they cut 300million from the navy’s budget. it was always robbing peter to pay paul even if paul was skint and broken. Thanks Brown you w*****
148. Is Obama shaping up to be a bad president? I dont follow that much, and watching the BBC is rather unsettling as they fawn over him.
Many on the left of British politics just dont get american society and its values, it seems so alien to them.
151
The requests were never made because it was made clear that they would not be met.
It’s like the old joke: “The sign above the bar says ‘Don’t ask for Credit as a punch in the Mouth often offends’ “
153 - and the Guardian one, as well. He’s not doing well, is he?
Brown shouldnt be allowed on car radios.He puts people to sleep.
“119.He did decide how many helicopters to purchase, he was the Chancellor, Geoff Hoon gave evidence to that effect.
As for you point about senior officers being “incompetent, small-minded pompous toads”
I asked for you evidence…your evidence is this?”
You are the one attacking the prime minister. What is your evidence that Gordon Brown opposed helicopter or body armour funding? He gives money to the army, and military men advise on how to spend it. If the top brass prefer to spend it on pet projects and vanities is not politicians’ fault. Unless you argued that they could trim down the number of useless generals.
“I read the news. The military are supposed to be public servants, I judge them on results. I do not need to know them to be able to judge them, it’s bigotry to imply otherwise.
Are you serious? That’s it? Men who have risked their lives & continue to do so, how would you compare to anyone of them I wonder.”
Your bigotry is showing again. The army is a made of professionals, who have chosen their careers and get paid very well I might add. I pay for them out of my taxes for national defense, and expect value for money like any other public service.
glenoglaza
#iraq Brown insists again that MOD budget was NEVER cut but rose in real terms year on year - BUT military say they were very stretched
glenoglaza
#iraq Brown: MOD had more money in real terms - but MOD was spending more & more. Brown accuses MOD of lack of budgetary control
The idea that a small increase in real terms in defence spending was an adequate response to fighting 2 wars far from these shores is just so ridiculous that I am amazed people don’t just laugh at him. The situation was greatly worsened by the Government’s determination to announce major capital spends on equipment that was not funded at regular intervals but particularly near elections. The consequences are huge waste on deferred contracts and soldiers killed on sntach landrovers. War on the cheap is inexcusable. The army should either have got better equipment or not have been there in the first place.
Anyone thinking Cameron and Clegg will let him off the hook like this?
The debates will be a disaster for Brown if he just tries to rattle selective stats.
gordo now developing a selective memory
Does anybody think the election of Geert Wilders as Dutch Prime Minister (now looking more and more likely) will boost the chances of BNP/UKIP ahead …Wilders might even endorse one of the two….? possibly Griffin?
One Tory Party Election Broadcast should just show any random 5 min clip of Brown giving evidence to Chilcott. Deliberatly filibustering, giving the same answer regarless of the question, hiding behind figures. Uninspired. Little man. Hardly a leader.
128, meurig:
“10 - Floater / 20 - Wibbler. Why are the LDs down so much? Well, there are many things I could say but my mother always said if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.
Seriously, the regional breakdowns are calamitous for the LDs in Mid & West, where they hold 3 seats. This has been a pattern in all YouGov’s Welsh polls. Time will tell whether this is a regional-breakdown-unreliability problem or a Lib Dem problem.”
Do the Lib Dems have many councillors in Wales?
Crikey - solid red on Telegraph.. no-one believes him, there aren’t enough bunker bots to drown out the facts.
170 - Gordo a real leader eh?
Blame anyone but me is his motto
glenoglaza
#iraq But what do al these figures mean? Is it true that 37 lives were lost because of wrong vehicles & not enough helicopters? Or not?
paulwaugh
At last, Brown lets slip his irritation with MoD over its funding in 2003.Treasury warned MoD of “complete lack of budgetary control”.
It just shows that when he is out of his comfort zone, what a poor performer Brown is. If the Chilcott panel were any good, they’d have had him storming out by now. The questions are soft, and they let him get away with waffling and him telling them what they should ask. He might struggle in the debates, I think.
he really is trying to blame everone else but himself it was the MoD. The helicopter budget wasnt an UOR it was in the main MoD budget so he can get away with we didnt turn any UOR down !!!!
If we were at war why were they trying to settle budgets with the MoD and not just do the job properly in the first place ?
He talks and talks ….but I hear nothing…am I alone in this ?
171 - Apparently, people ARE laughing at him.
It’s very sad though. Defence spending rose from a period where our most pressing defence spending was on sunblock in Cyprus.
That’s his argument?
@RocketmanIII
The defence budget went up sufficiently to provide our troops with the very best stones and gravel to throw at the bad guys in Iraq #chilcot
Wow. Telegraph not overly fond of Labour. Who’d have thought it. Tracker on Harare Chronicle red too!
Cameron gave speech to councillors - new policy announced.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/7376253/David-Cameron-All-council-officials-paid-over-58k-to-disclose-pay-perks-and-pension-pots.html
I suspect he is mildly autistic with this facination with numbers
174 Taffy
Wilders won’t endorse Griffin - they refuse to talk to them in the European Parliament I think - but could very easily endorse UKIP given all that Lord Pearson has done for him.
Of course, the person who has done most for his political success is one Jacqui Smith.
the Guardian Brownometer is solidly red too.
#iraqinquiry Hold up in the lunch queue. Brown is refusing to answer yes or no to the salad question……….
Brown defending his personal fiefdom from Blair’s ‘adventures’?
An act of spite against the occupant of No.10?
133 Philippe Magnan
Interesting statement from Hills. Are they taking advantage of the recent polling and media narrative to ‘balance the books’ or reporting a real trend?
Would be interesting to hear from shadsy on whether Ladbrokes are experiencing the same trends.
These quotes on helicopters are going to come back and bite him
re 185 bribrad, are you really sure that Brown is the best person to lead the country? Given the shift in the polls, don’t you wish you’d dumped him when you had the chance?
186
Don’t worry - he’ll have changed it by tomorrow. He’s not called Wobbler for nothing.
176. Yes, the LDs have a fair number of councillors in Wales. 162 at the last set of elections in 2008, though with their interesting byelection performances and the defections in Bridgend this is now around 150.
They’re not necessarily in the same places where they’re strong at other levels though, e.g. they only have 2 in Montgomery.
500 helicopters hmmm how many in afganistan ?
169.Is bigotry a new word you’ve just learned? Your view of armed forces is now on the record.
Alas, your allegations that our forces are lead by “incompetent, small-minded pompous toads” hasn’t been supported by any evidence, if asking for evidence of your view makes me a bigot then so be it.
Neither have you seen fit to enlighten me on the ‘billions wasted on super modern fighters”. You speak as though the armed forces commission them, I hardly know were to begin with your level of ignorance.
Swing voter, riiiiight.
Brown is at his best when defending his books. He is like a dour keeper of the “petty cash box” in a small office.
The pity of his career is that he is an ideal Chief Secretary to the Treasury and should never have been allowed to go on to hold higher office.
188 thanks Wibbler - also I see the Dutch GE isn’t until 9 June so we will probably be done and dusted by then….
I would be very very very surprised if the press don’t find a whole new bucket for Brown tomorrow.
Even The Mirror will struggle to defend this obfuscating nonsense. Maybe they can find a receipt for a Crunchie bar or something from one of Cameron’s staff for their front page.
BBCLauraK
End of long exchange over impact of budget changes on MOD - Brown adamant helicopter budget properly funded #iraq
“118 boosting the proportion of private sector activity in the economy and reducing the dependence on the state sector.”
But what would that mean to a swing voter? How could it be made encapsulated in a way that would make its meaning clear to those who only spend 5 secoinds per day (or less) thinking about politics?
glenoglaza
#iraq Brown said UK now has fleet of 600 helicopters (then a minute later said 500 !), biggest in Western Europe
This is typical of the questioning (from Telegraph blog
“Sir Lawrence says there was a 38 per cent gap between the number required and the number available. Ooh, we’ve got a bit of a debate here - Brown’s denying the inquiry’s figures, and Sir Lawrence is sticking to his guns.
But now they’ve just dropped it and moved on. Hey ho, thought they might try and pin him down there.”
202. If it can’t be explained then no one would ever give up smoking.
Short term pain for medium term gain.
201: I am right, they are wrong, they are tories…that’ll be the gist of it.
paulwaugh
Oh Christ, it’s even more painful when Brown DOES ‘answer’ the question
Is not Powys like the Highlands in that it votes for Liberals at general elections and random collections of independents as councillors?
A lack of Liberal councillors has never harmed the Lib Dems in the wilds of Scotland.
202. “Spending more taxpayers money does not produce sustainable growth. We need to rebalance the economy if public services are to be maintained.” Not very catchy but surely that’s the point.
re: military
A good starting article for Tories who are more interested in winning wars than posing and bashing Labour:
http://defenceoftherealm.blogspot.com/2008/02/lovely-new-aircraft-carrier-sir.html
182 Me too. He’s a really at communicating.
What I noticed most was when he was talking about soldiers - it didn’t sound warm or genuine at all, just more human tractor stuff.
I am afraid trying to tar Gordon with military underspend is a silly strategy.
Why? because the MOD overspend - on everything but what is needed. They are a bunch of incompetent spendthrifts.
After all, new fighters to shoot down Soviet bombers is not a really relevant option today: but it has been one of the keystones of MOD strategy since the 1980s.. A fault of the prior Conservative administration carried on by Labour..
202
Er, cuts in public services (NHS, schools, etc)
madasafish it is true the MoD are famous overspenders but to punish them for that at the time real equipment is needed for real troops in a real war is a disgraceful.
To see that as a commendable thing, as Brown does, is beneath contempt.
I myself would welcome the election of Master David Caramel as Tories are much easier for me to do business with.
R. Mugabe
@robinbogg
Brown: “We have learnt lessons. As it takes 9 yrs to get new helicopters we’re planning to invade Iraq in 2019.” #Chilcot #iraqinquiry
169. swingvoter, I dont think soldiers are paid that well. They get a lot less than firemen or police constables for doing a much riskier job.
The key point abou the budget is that there was an argument about whether the defence budget was big enough to cover our defence needs in peacetime but from 2003 the Armed Forces were being asked to do a lot more with not very much more money, which meant that things had to be cut. at a time when public spending was increasing in a big way this was a political decision by the chancellor.
213: And how is the NHS and schools going to be paid for?
OT: I am trying to find a balanced source of information about the impact of depleted uranium when used in places like Iraq. They are some extraordinary claims about huge rises in deformities in places like fallujah.
Getting information from the net seems a bit tricky as the sites that discuss the issue are rabid anti nuclear. Considering the deformity rates in Chernobyl were maybe 2x / 3x more then normal, and in hiroshima and nagasaki 5x more then normal, then for a hospital in Iraq to be suddenly over flowing with deformities, and then to link this to depleted uranium has me very curious.
Paul Waugh Standard:
All in all, despite his obfuscation, Brown emerges as a man who looks prime ministerial.
More helicopters would not save a single life or make an iota of difference to Afghanistan. Military strategy comes first, what kind of equipment to buy follows on from that. If the strategy is a failure (which it is), ordering a load of new expensive equipment would be throwing money away.
214
I disagree
It’s the MOD and the Heads of the Armed Services jobs to ensure they are properly equipped. If they are not, they should resign.
None did. So they considered everything was ok.
So the Heads are cowards or incompetent or both?
182. No you are not alone. It’s just the predictable buck-passing, obfuscatory bullsh*t you hear every day from third-rate bureaucrats defending the latest disaster at their departments.
This is what Brown is - a third rate bureaucrat who will never achieve anything and has no leadership qualities whatsoever.
Meanwhile, in the real economy…
The prices of goods leaving UK factory gates rose at their fastest in 14 months in the year to February and at more than double their average rate than over the past decade, according to official figures published on Friday.
The Office of National Statistics reported that manufactured output prices as measured by its producer price index rose by 4.1 per cent in the year to February, up 0.3 percentage points from an inflation rate of 3.8 per cent in January.
That is the highest rate since December 2008 – a time when prices were levelling off following a surge in commodity prices early in the year and as the global recession accelerated. In the past ten years, output prices have averaged just below 2 per cent annual inflation.
Cutting out volatile elements like food, alcohol and petrol products, the index rose by 2.9 per cent in the year to last month, up from 2.6 per cent in January.
The stronger rises in the prices of manufactured goods has come after the pound has fallen by about 25 per cent against other currencies since the financial crisis kicked in in 2007. This has driven up the costs of imports.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/269e011a-283f-11df-9f8f-00144feabdc0.html
Stagflation anyone?
210.So what would you say will be the strategic threats in 30 years time? Perhaps hotspots could include China invading Taiwan, Falklands, India/Pakistan war, Gulf war III. Who knows? seems to me having a nuclear deterent, having aircraft carriers that can project strength is a good thing, no?
Or perhaps Service Chiefs raising these questions makes them “incompetent, small-minded pompous toads”.
Or perhaps you don’t know what your talking about.
212. I think that is looking at the strategic options where I would broadly agree. Nevertheless when you start a war it is a good idea to give serious thought about what you need to fight it. We have now been in Afghanistan for a longer period than the second world war. Think how much kit we had at the end of that war that had not even been invented at the start. We did not need armoured troop vehicles for getting around the German plains or even Northern Ireland but a moment’s thought about what we were getting into in 2002 would have resulted in a whole new set of priorities. Similarly with helicopters. We used a lot in a small area in Northern Ireland but the implications of this in something the size of Helmund does not seem to have been considered.
218
People paying their taxes might help.
paulwaugh
Brown smiles at #iraqinquiry audience and asks how they are finding it. Stony silence. http://bit.ly/9QJrpW
221 “More helicopters would not save a single life or make an iota of difference to Afghanistan.”
oh dear
203.
Utterly incredible.
Brown is moving his imaginary helicopters around the battlefield.
227. Difficult to do that when after a Labour victory they all move to Bern, Hong Kong and Belize.
223.
This is what Brown is - a third rate bureaucrat who will never achieve anything…
Oh dear.
Remember boys and girls, Runnymede was saying this about someone who is the Prime Minister.
Now, now - don’t laugh too hard at poor Runnymede. It might not be their fault…
227: Ashcroft does pay the taxes he is required to under law.
Paul Waugh Standard
Yet more evidence that the Brown smile isn’t working as well as he’d like.
Susan Smith, whose son Private Phillip Hewett, 21, died when his lightly armoured Snatch Land Rover was blown up in Al Amarah in 2005, watched Mr Brown up close in the inquiry room.
She was not that impressed by his expression of sadness for the deaths of the 179 British personnel in Iraq.
“To be honest, I just get a feeling that some of it is spin. I imagine he’s genuinely sorry, but is it for political reasons that he said it?”
She also criticised the Prime Minister’s failure to directly answer the questions put to him. With words that will chime with Brown’s wider obfuscatory crimes throughout his career, she declared:
“To be honest, I found it very hard work because they never seem to answer anything. He goes all around the world and we’re no further forward than we were when we started. It becomes hard work trying to find an answer in his answers - I’m struggling to find some substance in there, and there isn’t any.
“He’s saying there’s this much money here and there was that much money there. But he’s not actually answering anything.”
Maj Gen Patrick Cordingley, a former Gulf War commander, also said he felt “cynical” throughout Mr Brown’s evidence. He said that although urgent operational needs were probably met in full but the real issue was chronic underfunding of the military over many years.
http://waugh.standard.co.uk/2010/03/browns-rictus-smile-its-working-kind-of.html
Does it really matter how he performed today? Its the soundbites he provided for the papers and the Tories that really matters and as per there will be plenty.
“Helicopters? We had more then the Americans in Vietnam, only the lieing army says they didnt!” etc etc
229
And the Defence Chief who resigned over a lack of helicopters was?
They are a bunch of toadies and incompetents .
Well, I’ve just heard a strange bit of gossip concerning Gordon and that the orange blob:
http://tinyurl.com/ybctzou
The story goes that it was hastily applied concealer, intended to cover up a nasty bruise Gordon got on his forehead after head butting a door-frame. Apparently he was sent into a fury when he heard some unflattering remarks about him by Vince Cable! The story comes from a fringe player in the Westminster political whom I regard as unreliable.
227 - People paying their taxes might help.
You might want to mention that to Labour Non doms and all those ministers who took tax advice.
Unless you believe Darlings defence that is?
217, Andrew Spencer
“The key point abou the budget is that there was an argument about whether the defence budget was big enough to cover our defence needs in peacetime but from 2003 the Armed Forces were being asked to do a lot more with not very much more money, which meant that things had to be cut. at a time when public spending was increasing in a big way this was a political decision by the chancellor.”
When there isn’t enough money to cover all costs you cut non-essential projects which the MOD has plenty of. If saving lives and winning in Afghanistan is the priority then we shouldn’t be building more aircraft carriers and squadrons of fighter jets which there is no use for.
I am not at all against rank-and-file soldiers. I am criticising generals, who are too numerous and overpaid. I should have made that clear.
203. Uk has a fleet of 492 helicopters, down from 634 at the start of 2003 and which will reduce to 303 by 2020.
What difference will Chilcot make? Not that much, I suggest. It gives the Lib Dems a critically needed opportunity to put some distance between themselves and Labour. It changes the hot media topic. But everyone has formed their view of the rights and wrongs years ago. All it does is eat up time.
paulwaugh
Brown just smiled again and nodded at the #iraqinquiry audience. Not a good move.
220 He’s correct. With the exception of Major all our recent PMs have left office slightly bonkers.
239
am criticising generals, who are too numerous and overpaid. I should have made that clear.”
Ignorance is bliss, it would appear. Generals do NOT decide on procuremnt policy.
Period.
Anyone who knows anything about military procurement by 5 minutes study knows that..
239.Just who do you swing between mr swingvoter, I’m betting on Socialist Labour & Communist.
202 nickc - Like this:
“Tower Hamlets is the second worst council in Britain for recycling but it’s been paying the director in charge of recycling a vast £148,173 a year.
Is this really value for money? Taxpayers should have the tools and information to decide.”
From the Cameron speech - link at 186
238.
You might want to mention that to Labour Non doms and all those ministers who took tax advice.
But only the TORY DEPUTY CHAIRMAN gave a specific pledge to become fully UK tax resident in return for his peerage.
It seems he, and only he, reneged on that.
246. That coward Cameron - hiding away like tim said - by giving a speech in public to a large audience.
Madasafish you are blaming the wrong blokes for the right offense. The political masters are the ones who need to listen to their military men and then meet their needs. (That is why soldiers are not allowed to be politicians.)
Considering we now have evidence from three or four very reliable sources that this did not happen should have led to ministerial resignations.
But when ever did a Labour minister resign in recognition of his or her own incompetence?
242 - paulwaugh
Brown just smiled again and nodded at the #iraqinquiry audience. Not a good move.
He has obviously been told to do this and so …. he does.
Just not in a human way and nor can he learn from the feedback he is getting from his targets.
Fox of Evening Standard now kicking Brown
Robert Fox: Brown makes it sounds like a roaring success. He is in a parallel universe. Panel are appalling. Not worked out questions - completely bamboozled by Brown’s budget speak mode.
247: Jeeez…BenM you really have no idea what you’re talking about…
Ashcroft=tax resident. He pays UK tax on UK earnings.
239. “If saving lives and winning in Afghanistan is the priority then we shouldn’t be building more aircraft carriers and squadrons of fighter jets which there is no use for.”
There’s the mistake too many people make about defence and Afghanistan. The MoD’s priority is not to win the war in Afghanistan: it is to defend the realm. Afghanistan is part of that, and is the MoD’s most urgent task at present, but if you start chopping fighters and carriers now because we dont need them in Afghanistan, what happenes when we do need them in, say, the Falklands?
The MoD has to try and keep a balanced force to protect us against any number of potential threats. To ask them to do that AND to fight two wars on only a small uplift in budget is unrealistic and is bound to led to a crisis in spending which is what the MoD has.
No one can say the MoD is a model department in the way it spends its budget: it isnt, its a shambles, but then so is the Department of health and yet it has never had its budget squeezed under this goverment.
220 BenM
I think that is just Paul Waugh quoting David Blunkett.
244, madasafish
“Ignorance is bliss, it would appear. Generals do NOT decide on procuremnt policy.”
A group of people decide on procurement. The ministry of defence makes it’s proposals after receiving feedback from generals, admirals and other military staff.
The military did not start complaining about lack of body armour and helicopters until their failed strategy started costing lives. Only then did they start playing up the fake patriotism/concerns for the rank-and-file.
In any case blaming Gordon Brown is transparently partisan.
But when ever did a Labour minister resign in recognition of his or her own incompetence?
Didn’t Estelle Morris resign as Education Secretary saying she was’t up to the job?
247.So Lord Paul didn’t give the pledge, therefore can legislate & bankroll Labour without objection, despite being a NonDom? Is that really your argument?
247 - ‘But only the TORY DEPUTY CHAIRMAN gave a specific pledge to become fully UK tax resident in return for his peerage.’
Are you saying he reneged on what he’d agreed with parliamentary authorities?
247 Ben - Repeat after me:
RESIDENCE is not the same as DOMICILE
May I respectfully suggest you repeat that a few hundred times until you’ve finally got it, before you post further on the subject?
255.What strategy would you propose that would stop the enemy shooting at our troops. This could be brilliant.
259: I swear 90% of the lefty fury is built on ingorance, stupidity and the spin of not knowing the difference between residency and domicile.
259 - Richard, You know I think that Ben and a couple of others really not interested in the factual position, just what they can try and portray as the position.
Bit like Brown really but hopefully these bots dont bully people.
Wife was polled by yougov today. She was asked about Ashcroft and said that on a number of questions the possible options were poor….either a very strong statement or I don’t care. Says it is the first time she has taken a yougov survey and felt the possible answers were biased.
In any case blaming Gordon Brown is transparently partisan.
by swingvoter March 5th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
That’s a keeper.
247 “But only the TORY DEPUTY CHAIRMAN gave a specific pledge to become fully UK tax resident in return for his peerage.”
So you and others are persistent in saying but this was most definitely not the case. His commitment was to be a ‘long term resident’ (with the concomitant non-dom tax status) and was accepted by the appointments committee.
The problem is that so many people assumed otherwise that the wrongful assumption has passed into folklore.
Indeed, why should he have been asked for anything more. Was Lord Paul asked to be a permanent and UK taxpaying on worldwide income resident? No. Was wotishisname Cohen and all the others in return for their Blair and Brown-bestowed honours? In return for big contributions to Labour funds. No.
249
Witan
“you are blaming the wrong blokes for the right offense. The political masters are the ones who need to listen to their military men and then meet their needs”
So the military men who persist in fighting the cold war should be fired?
The military men are the ones who want lots of projects most of which either do not work, are late, or cost the earth. Or all three.
I am afraid blaming the politicians alone is not correct. I am not saying they are not guilt free: I am saying to blame politicians only is wrong.
And as no TOP military men have resigned over lack of equipment says it all. They either believe they have what they need or they are cowards.
After all, even politicians have to rely on expert advice: which is the General Staff and the MOD.
A long history suggests total incompetence.
202 nickc
Given the choice would you prefer to send your children to Eton or to your local comprehensive?
Given the choice would you prefer to have a surgical operation carried out by BUPA or your local NHS hospital?
OK, the above are a big extreme, so:
Given the choice would you prefer to commute on a train as it was under British Rail or today as it is under private operators?
Given the choice would your prefer to live in a flat owned and maintained by your local council or one that is owned and maintained by an independent Housing Association or Property Company?
I can go on …
With all the supine and inept questioning I do wonder if Chilcott and his committee members realise what fate awaits their reputations when they eventually finish their sofa chats? A bucket of smelly stuff will be thrown all over them.
They probably think that they are doing a good job.
262 I agree.
246. That is pretty shocking. The director of recycling for Tower Hamlets should be on about £40k, maybe £50k max.
£148,000???????
There are endless examples of this if you go on the Guardian website. Just revoltingly high wages for ludicrous public sector non-jobs.
One way to cut the deficit would be to slash all public sector salaries by 10%. Maybe rising to 25% for anyone over £100,000. Do it right across the board. Just cut their wages. Everyone of them.
Oh, those poor dentists, having to get by on £90,000 a year rather than £120,000.
And who were the incompetent ministers who allowed the MoD to overspend and did not find the resources for the helicopters, body armour, boots, vehichles and a thousand and one other things which the military so clearly said they needed?
Don’t blame the generals unless you know and can show that they did not give the right shopping list in time to the ministers concerned.
Luminaries, that is, such as Swiss Tony, Buff Hoon, John ‘Bullyboy’ Reid. Only Hutton had the decency to admit to failings in some degree in procurement.
@253 by GeoffH March 5th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
I don’t know why you bother Geoff, they want Ashcroft to be the story, but today the news cycle is elsewhere.
267 - even toilets from the mirror said they were not up to it
265.Which is why you are now speaking German/Russian or perhaps twaddle.
245, Chris_g00
Concern for the army and value-for-money in public spending makes me a communist?
Unlike it seems almost everyone, I would like us to win in Afghanistan. Another reason why I can’t vote for your New Conservatives.
257.
Lord Paul isn’t central to Labour’s election strategy, so cannot be accused of trying to buy off the election despite not paying UK tax on all their earnings.
Also, Lord Paul hasn’t made a specific pledge to deal with his tax status as Lord Ashcroft did. Lord Paul did not then duck, dive and weave to avoid questions about that tax status until he was forced to admit it prior to the Electoral COmmission reporting on it.
So I’m afraid there just aren’t the same questions about Lord Paul as there are about Ashcroft and the Tory leadership’s judgement.
Honestly, stop spinning Tories. That’s why you’re in this mess.
Estelle Morris resigned saying she had done no wrong but didn’t feel she was right for the job.
So take half a point there.
165- “Is Obama shaping up to be a bad president?”
For the moment, so much rides on the outcome of Obamacare. He has invested practically his entire presidency in it so far and has taken a walloping for it, not least of all because we’re in the middle of an economic disaster and people feel he’s been working on the wrong things. However, if it passes, he will claim a major policy triumph and will have something he can sell when he faces voters again in 2012, plus a cornerstone to his legacy and a place in the pantheon of left-wing reformers. He may also see his image improve because he at least won’t be seen as completely ineffective (although it did take him forever to pass it).
The bigger problem will be whether he can convince the public to embrace a change in their lives that they didn’t support when it was passed. The bill itself is highly flawed with many reforms not kicking in for years, and the process by which it would be passed (a Senate bill with a few patches sewn on in reconciliation) won’t produce a bill that anybody really likes very much. He has badly alienated the center of American politics through the actions he has undertaken in his first year or so, and he’ll need to fix that up going forward if he wants to be politically successful.
274: What does ‘win’ mean?
Mr Browns would not get away with this if my secret police tortu …er,questioned him in the dungeo … er, offices in Harare. I prefer the Conservative Party: men of honour and integrity and men who keep their promises on tax and domiciles. I will be honoured to shake Mr Calamares’ hand when he becomes PM and to do business with him. RM
269 - Encouraging recycling is more important than, say, writing novels, wouldn’t you say? There are especial challenges in doing so in inner city London.
264 “The problem is that so many people assumed otherwise that the wrongful assumption has passed into folklore”
And, I’ll add, looking for evidence that he’d broken the non-existent commitment, rather like The Times has been doing for the past 10 years or so, without ever acknowledging that he’d fulfilled the ACTUAL commitment that was made.
275: Sorry I can’t take seriously a person which doesn’t understand the difference between ‘tax residency’ and ‘domcile’ on this subject.
You do not know what you are talking about.
seeing brown at chilcot how will he do in the election debates ?
280. The taxpayer doesnt buy mr Ts novels.
255.The military did not start complaining about lack of body armour and helicopters until their failed strategy started costing lives. Only then did they start playing up the fake patriotism/concerns for the rank-and-file.
What strategy would have stopped the enemy shooting at us? Your views could save lives please share them.
282.
Sorry I can’t take seriously a person which doesn’t understand the difference between ‘tax residency’ and ‘domcile’ on this subject.
Translation: Slacky has got no argument.
274. swingvoter, why do you think the Tories are less likely to win in afghanistan than anyone else?
Agree the Chilcott panel are bad - they desperately need a QC rather than a collection of great & good with little experience of examination of evidence.
Gordon Brown is very obviously trying to show himself as better than Blair; opening statement on deaths was because Tony didn’t, plan to meet any of the Iraq dead families present at later date is because Tony wouldn’t, the smiles and recognition of audience is because Tony didn’t. He is over-prepared on budget issues, answering the questions he is expecting, not the ones asked, and if there was a QC he would be tied up in knots by unexpected ones.
284 - on that logic, we wouldn’t pay council officials at all unless their services could be self-funding.
A special prize for anyone who can find a novelist in residence at a local authority.
286: Translation, you don’t know what you’re talking about and are ignorant about UK tax definitions.
How much did the Guardian avoid paying in tax last year through deft changes to its status. 300 million wasn’t it?
Poor old Michael is a beginner by comparison even at the most extreme estimates the Guardian makes.
Hypocrisy with your tea Mr Rusbridger? One lump or two?
280 Come off it, antifrank. What are these ‘challenges’, other than perhaps some government clap-trap about diversity? It’s just routine administration of a simple task: collecting bins and paying someone - on a long-term contract - to take the stuff away. Oh, and printing some leaflets showing lots of trees. I’d bet that if the Director of Recycling goes off sick for 6 months, it would continue perfectly well without his or her input.
There are hundreds of thousands of people in the private sector doing much more demanding jobs than that on £40K.
278, Slackbladder
“What does ‘win’ mean?”
Stabilising Afghanistan enough to be able to leave in the next two or three years.
When we can remove all of our troops give Karzai a billion or so a year to maintain their army, the way the US props up Israel and doesn’t need to send it’s own troops into the region.
Let me see now Brown at Chicott and not had time to read threads but let me guess what the Labourbots will be saying
Tim……..
“Chicott sruggling to get traction on Brown. This can only add a few points to the polls and Brown is wiping the floor with them”
Gabble……….
“Hague
Cameron
Ashcroft
What did they know?”
(I know stuff all to do with Chilcott what when did that stop him)
BenM………..
Uuuuu. um nice picture yeah…pretty red doggy on it
Toenails Robibnson
“Well thats Gordon cleared of any wrongdoing or involvement unlike that Ashcroft and that illegal war in ther South Atlantic”
Nuff said
http://www.epolitix.com/latestnews/article-detail/newsarticle/early-skirmishes-won-by-the-tories/
289. Garbage - the fact is that every taxpayer penny should be spent very carefully. £140k for head dustman is not value for money.
If people want to spend whats left of their own private money on books or cds - then thats their choice.
280. As Harry Flashman says, you the taxpayer are not paying for me to fly to Thailand to write novels between hookers, nor are you paying for my pension (I don’t have one), my sick pay (I don’t get it), paternity leave (no such thing in my world) etc etc
Everything I make I make with the sweat of my brow.
I bet the director of recycling for Tower Hamlets, earning close to the salary of the prime minister, has a lovely pension, too.
FFS.
293
the way the US props up Israel _so that it_ doesn’t need to send it’s own troops into a messy conflict
264. Not quite. His commitment to Hague was to “take up permanent residence in the UK again”. This would rule out being non-dom, as part of being non-dom is to declare that the UK is not your permanent home. However, in negotiation with the Govt, they agreed that ‘permanent resident’ could be interpreted as ‘long term resident’ - which isn’t really the same thing, as he could be both resident and ordinarily resident, but still claim to be non-dom. Since the issue with Ashcroft was that he wasn’t living here full time, ‘long term resident’ may have addressed the ‘living here full time’ issue - but is not precisely what he promised. Perhaps with all the other non-dom Peers in the HoL they reckoned ‘what’s the difference’…..
glenoglaza Sir martin gilbert asking these questions is an historian
286 You’re making a fool of yourself.
Seriously chaps, that comment reveals such ignorance of his own ignorance as to make any engagement pointless.
289, 296 - I’m shocked at how little you value recycling. Clearly the Conservative conversion on green matters is only skin-deep.
275.Lord Paul is bankrolling the Labour Party, has been a Privy Councillor, what did he do to earn that honour, do you suppose?
Your post effectively boils down to 2 things
1.Lord Paul didn’t give a pledge, so can continue behaving as Ashcroft is, that is to say staying as a NonDom and funding the party of his choice.
2.Lord Paul is useless when it comes to party strategy and Ashcroft isn’t therefore Ashcroft should be criticised, while Paul is beyond reproach.
I mean it’s a view I suppose Ben…
Seth - A serious operation with BUPA?
no thanks.
no backup,bloods or consultant cover.
They have nice flower vases though.
288 Ted
I think you are being a little unfair on the Chilcot team. No, they are not conducting forensic cross-examinations in the manner of a leading criminal law QC, but the inquiry is not a criminal court.
The best they can hope for from Brown is gathering statements which can then be compared and contrasted with the evidence already given by the military and then used to draw conclusions. The main evidence will be the underlying documentation and not the ’show trial’ proceedings.
The sting will be in the tail when the final report is published.
256 - BenM - Estelle Morris resigned because she was rubbish - and this is good for Labour how, exactly?
302 I value recycling. Lots of Tories are quite obsessive about it. My hubby for one. My father in law for two.
Is Tim smearing BUPA now?
S&S : “For the moment, so much rides on the outcome of Obamacare. He has invested practically his entire presidency in it so far…”
Indeed. All of his political capital lays in the middle of the poker table. He just can’t lose that bet. That’s why, basically — because Obama’s going ballistic, for his very own political survival — I’ve bet more on Obamacare to be signed into law recently. I now own 1200 contract at an average of 43% percent.
The intrade contract is now trading around 53%.
Hopefully, this is what will happen in the debates too
http://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/10027687293
275 “Lord Paul isn’t central to Labour’s election strategy”
You need to get over the idea that being a party functionary (and that is all that Lord Ashcroft is when it’s boiled down to basics) is the same as being part of the State apparatus.
I know this is difficult for the Left who have always believed in the idea that the party is the State (Re Labour 1997 manifesto: “New Labour is no less than the political arm of the British people as a whole”. The most dangerous statement ever made by a political party bidding for an election win in this country).
Political Parties can call on who they like for employment in the party machine. Even, Americans such as Bob Schrum to write speeches for Gordon Brown. It is not a requirement that they be citizens or registered to vote. I don’t recall such arguments being made in 2005 when Lynton Crosby was hired to do a job of work.
As it happens, Ashcroft fulfills those conditions (though someone yesterday falsely alleged he’d changed his nationality. The sign of a desperate men reaching for desperate arguments).
As Richard Nabavi pointed out residency is not the same as domicile. And there is no evidence that I have seen in the public domain that required Ashcroft to be counted as domiciled (It would be strange if he was, as he quite clearly had good reasons to regard himself as Belizean as well as British).
302: I think people value recycling, wether they value £140k being spent on one person in charge of it is another matter.
307 - I had to read that post very carefully. For a moment, I thought that you were suggesting a very unconventional homelife.
291 – Witan, not sure that figure is correct; the Guardian sold a 50% share of ‘Auto Trader’ last year which generated £300 million, presumably their off-shore tax status saved them the Tax due on that – plus making a huge saving on the UK corporate tax normally due of course. Don’t quote me on it though.
302 antifrank
There is a big difference between valuing recyling, and valuing recyling coordinators.
302 Quite the opposite, antifrank. Good Conservatives assiduously recycle their Oddbins wine bottles and compost the skins of their Waitrose mangoes, without needing to be cajoled at a price of £140K a year.
307 Lol.
And no.
287, Andrew Spencer
“swingvoter, why do you think the Tories are less likely to win in afghanistan than anyone else?”
1/ They have politicised the issue in a way Labour couldn’t
2/ They will let the top brass get away with much more as part of their fake ‘patriotism’ spin which plays well with many Tory voters
3/ Cameron has less of a stake in Afghanistan than Labour does since he was not involved in the original invasion.
4/ There is more potential for fooling the public that something might change for the better and wasting more years and lives in the process.
266 Don’t see the relevance of this to my central argument - are you saying the Tories offer Eton-style education or BUPA-style operations to the entire country? No one would seriously suppose that is possible.
277 - What are the Labour Party doing with Lord Paul’s money if not trying to win the election?
http://order-order.com/2009/02/02/guardians-tax-hypocrisy-is-ridiculous/
Guido has the low-down on the guardians rank tax hypocrisy.
304 tim
Not my experience. Perfectly satisfied with only surgical operation I have had.
Remember private insurance gives you the option to chose your hospital and consultant. It even covers you to have the operation outside the UK (as I did), at leading NHS teaching hospitals or any NHS hospital that provides private treatment.
So you can get the nice room and flower vase together with the “back-up”.
Just read Guido re Liam Fox - I did it was strange yesterday when he appeared to be the tory spokesman and appeared to drop David Cameron in it. Come on Dave show us what you are made of!
Only watched Gordon Brown for ten minutes after lunch when I got home from work and already have a migraine. The panel have shown today, if we didn’t know already, what a totally inept bunch they are. Brown in full ‘waffle mode’ - does not bode well for the Leaders Debates. I hope DC does his maths homework.
315 Tories don’t shop in Waitrose. Oddbins yes, Waitrose no. Waitrose is far too Guardianista for them. The John Lewis partnership certainly does not compute.
Mandy gets nailed on Labour non-doms..
http://blog.itv.com/news/tombradby/?p=56
What innovative scheme is this guy going to come up with ? 1 black , 1 blue and 1 green bin collected every two weeks and recycled ? How innovative…
Give him 140k and a cushy pension - 150+ council tax payers required just to pay for him. Probably a few more for his PA.
323: We’re much more M+S simply food. (although when I was a student I did shop at waitrose…it was the closest!)
Of course the MOD budget rose, we were fighting a bloody war. the fact is it didn’t rise enough.
Of course, at Stafford NHS, you wanted nice flower vases in your room to drink out of whilst the nurses etc neglected you and let you die of dehydration whilst sleeping in your own filth.
Listening to Brown on the radio and dozed off. Did he bore his way to PM using Lord Paul’s money to buy the whole PLP a Horlicks.
No, wait that is what he made of it……
Afternoon all and this is an interesting poll even if the Tory numbers are supposedly down on last year. Gains for Team Cameron in Wales and Scotland may be the difference between parity and a majority just as the 11 Scottish seats were in 1992 when the majority was 21.
NEWS FROM LIBDEM CONFERENCE
At lunchtime on the Scottish news it was reported that Alistair Carmichael the LibDem Scottish leader at Westminster said under no circumstances would the LibDems support a minority Gordon Brown government or form a coalition with him.
That implies Nick Clegg has the coalition agreement drafted.
I sat down to watch Brown after lunch but it was soooooooo boring that I just wakened up when I heard Robert Fox getting stuck in. I gather Brown gave a budget speech in answer to the questioning.
Kay Burley must have been spurned by McDoom that she is not playing her normal role of Gordon cheerleader-in-chief this afternoon.
310 GeoffH “there is no evidence that I have seen in the public domain that required Ashcroft to be counted as domiciled”
Ashcroft to Hague:
“I hereby give you my clear and unequivocal assurance that I have decided to take up permanent residence in the UK again before the end of this calendar year”
‘permanent resident’ and ‘non-domiciled’ are incompatible. ‘long term resident’ and ‘non-domiciled’ are compatible. The issue is not Hague - but the Govt which agreed to the change from ‘permanent’ to ‘long term’.
comical ali broadcasting = skynews
Why can’t people see that Brown is just lying? Are they totally and utterly BLIND? Why don’t they open their eyes? Surely they must realise that basically he is lying and fundamentally being untruthful? I can’t believe they can’t just pull the blinkers from their eyes and see that basically he is not being honest. They should take off their blindfolds and see what lies he is telling. Why can’t they see it? They are covering their eyes and trying to pretend that he isn’t lying. I can’t understand why they can’t pull the wool from over their eyes and recognise that basically he is fundamentally a lying liar. Why can’t they ….(continue until a light dizziness sets in and then have to lie down in a darkened room until ready to go on with mindless rant)
Sir John Chilcot: A wetter man I have never seen on TV. He makes Mavis Riley look like Gengis Khan in his questioning style.
Why are we watching this garbage? It was only ever (being a Labour enquiry into a Labour war) going to be a whitewash.
Brown is making a big mistake in smiling though. It really frightens the horses.
331. In order to sheild there own non-doms, as a very astute pber pointed out.
would one of the Labour staffers get on their Blackberry and get one of Gordon’s people to ask him to stop smirking - his wierd gurning is deeply off-putting.
Easteross snap - snoozathon.
re 266 Seth if they have any sense anyone should choose to have surgery at their local NHS hospital rather than BUPA.
I am now recording Brown in case I become an insomniac sometime.
323 Jonathan - Around my area there are Waitroses in Crowborough, Tenterden, Sevenoaks, East Grinstead, etc. All pretty much Guardianista-free zones, I’d have thought.
317 - “1/ They have politicised the issue in a way Labour couldn’t
2/ They will let the top brass get away with much more as part of their fake ‘patriotism’ spin which plays well with many Tory voters.”
Yeah, go f**k yourself. I’m not going to take lessons in what constitutes false patriotism from a person who is clearly in love with Bob Ainsworth; the man with the blind cheek to declare expressing concern about troops being killed because of a lack of helicopters is tantamount to treason. If anyone is guilty of using the war to create fake patriotism - and indeed bastardise the whole concept of it - it’s your piece of shit party. Once again, go f**k yourself.
334 It is awhitewash but its not a great if people can see the muck underneath.
If he can’t do well when he has such an easy ride, when can he?
Chilcot: “Life in Iraq incomparably better” hmmm I might have that view, but should the head of the inquiry be stating that?
Brown’s response “I think these are the right questions to ask…”
Carlotta@299 “However, in negotiation with the Govt, they agreed that ‘permanent resident’ could be interpreted as ‘long term resident’ - which isn’t really the same thing, as he could be both resident and ordinarily resident, but still claim to be non-dom.”
The problem with demanding a commitment to ‘permanent residence’ is that, logically, nobody, least of all Aschroft could realistically make such a commitment.
In my own case, I’ve lived and worked in Austria and have frequently thought about returning and living there for the rest of my days. My son lives and works in France and there is always the possibility that I might need to move and live with him in my dotage.
Neither are active or even likely possibilities as things now stand. I am likely to be ‘permanently resident’ until the day I die. But if I made a legally binding commitment to be such now, what happens if the unexpected takes me to either of those two countries in the future?
In Ashcroft’s case the likelihood that he may wish to end his days in Belize must be much higher. If he’d made the commitment to ‘permanent residence’ and then circumstances in 15 or 20 years time forced him to break that commitment what would you do?
More realistically, and definitely more honestly, the commitment was made to ‘long-term residency’.
336. Yes - me, wasn’t it?
320- Champagne socialists like the Guardian crowd are the scum of the earth… preaching socialism snd egalitarianism to the masses while practicing every hated vice of the capitalists they make a living criticizing. They’re really no different from George Orwell’s pigs in Animal Farm.
331 Carlotta ‘permanent resident’ and ‘non-domiciled’ are incompatible.
Why?
336. - No doubt. In a previous life the CEO of the Company I worked for observed of a public dispute with our competitor, ‘two whores brawling in public will do none of us any good’…..
341 - I’ve just realised I must live suspiciously near Richard Nabavi
341 - no Waitrose in Tonbridge?
318 nickc
The first two questions tested aspirational preferences rather than realities. Real choices do exist in the later two questions.
Gove’s educational proposals will allow Eton College, for example, to manage or even invest in new local schools. Say they decided to do so in Windsor or Slough, I wonder whether applications for entry would be oversubscribed?
As to BUPA provision for all, we need to distinguish between insurance and health service provision. In my view - which is not the view of the Conservative Party - both would be better provided through the private sector. It seems that this is the dominant view of the vast majority of Americans too who have experience with private sector insurance and health provision. I am not though an opponent of the “free at point of delivery” policy in the UK.
This is not a revolutionary call to arms. A properly managed evolutionary transition would convince me the country is moving in the right and proper direction.
348. Because to claim to be non-domiciled you have to state that your permanent home is NOT the UK, but somewhere else.
317. 1) politicising the issue: does that make them less likely to win? There has been criticism of how the war has been managed and paid for but it is the duty of an opposition to question the government. Has it gone too far? yes, on occasions, but most of it has been valid.
2)I’m not sure it fair to say Tory politicians are “fake patriots”. It is difficult to know what the Tory attitude towards the top brass will be. They may be more questioning as they tend to know more about the Armed Forces than Labour politicians, but equally they may not. The top brass has a lot to answer for for the failure in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it was the politicians who often put them in difficult positions (as in Helmand in 2006, which we went into for poltical reasons but with far too many troops. The brass should have refused to go with so few troops but that isnt their way).
3) A lot of Labour regard Afgahnistan as Blair’s war, just as much as Iraq, and are not invested in it. Cameron has made Afghanistan a central part of his thinking which Brown hadnt until the last year or so.
4) If you mean they are less likely to cut and run, I agree.
Here are some of the inner city recycling problems discussed:
http://www.web4water.com/library/view_article.asp?id=4599&channel=4
There is a serious question here. How do we value public sector jobs? Should we look at cost to taxpayers or should we look at the value of the service performed?
331. Carlotta. That’s the point, isn’t it? That the incompatibility was recognised and reconciled so that the actual commitment made was the one made (Yes, I know) and the one that has been honoured in full.
PB Tories are getting rather sad. Today they’ve added Chilcott to their ever growing attack list. They seem to cry foul at everyone these days: Pollsters, all broadcasters, the old Tory press, now this committee. etc etc.
Last year, Labour was definitely in the bunker. Now the situation is clearly reversed.
Downfall spoof about You Gov weightings anyone?
What makes the Tory bunkerites particularly sad, is that despite their moaning they are still firm favourites to win.
Kay Burley:
Four hours - no knockout blows.
347. “Champagne socialists like the Guardian crowd are the scum of the earth…”
Now simply replace the word ’socialist’ with the word ‘conservative’ there and I think the apoplexy provoked would have taken until Easter to burn itself out.
On-topic, and in happier news (*puts on Canadian accent*) another terrrr-ible poll for the Conservative party.
353 Carlotta. Not true.
A Polish plumber who comes to live here for 30 years, but who hopes one day to retire to Poland where he has family, would be permanently resident in the UK but domiciled in Poland, even if he had no home in Poland.
Robert Fox:
Brilliant politics on Brown’s part.
358.I think the secretaries will survive another day
Is this the laziest BBC article ever?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8549380.stm
348 “331 Carlotta ‘permanent resident’ and ‘non-domiciled’ are incompatible.
Why?”
Indeed, Here’s one who manages that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Rausing
But, I suspect, Ashcroft sought to be more realistic in defining his status so that future moves would not be seen as breaking a commitment.
345. Perhaps Ashcroft was unwise, or ill-advised, to write ‘permanent’….but its what he wrote. Declarations of domicile are a a combination of fact (where you were born) and intention (where you see as your long term home) - if Ashcroft had written to Hague ‘long term resident’ there would be no discussion. But he didn’t.
361
We all know that this is a declaration of disgust on Fox’s part.
357 - sorry, Chilcott has been criticised for ages for not being sufficiently lawyerly about this. That’s nothing new, and the criticism has come from all sides.
280
The point is the Tower Hamlets employee would get their £148K no matter how good or bad they were.
Novelists stay poor if they are no good. Public sector workers get paid come what may!
Are you saying you think £148K for a recycling official is acceptable? I think half that would be megabucks, £148K is frankly bordering on the obscene.
(half that would still be more than an MP for example…)
It’s reassuring in a way though - a detrmined government might not find it quite so hard to cut the edficit as it appears, with so much obvious waste and fat in the system as it is.
Brown rather good - composed and assured. Shame for legions of Tory sycophants on here.
Paul Waugh tweets “Hacks losing the will to live here as PM drones on at #iraqinquiry. So bad, it makes u want to fast-forward to Dougie Alexander’s session.”
Guido says “Robert Fox, Evening Standard defence correspondent, said…
“Gordon Brown is in a parallel universe.””
Is it really that awful - Gordon just ploughing on with the tractor stats and nothing’s his fault or he was away that day?
So another furlong marker passed on the way to the election with no further damage?
355 antifrank There is a serious question here. How do we value public sector jobs? Should we look at cost to taxpayers or should we look at the value of the service performed?
The answer is simple: we should pay the minimum amount required to get someone of the calibre required to do the job. The whole concept of ‘valuing’ jobs is nonsense.
“What makes the Tory bunkerites particularly sad, is that despite their moaning they are still firm favourites to win.”
That is unfortunately true of some. I’d be very happy to wake up on May 7th, and find that there’s been a swing of 10% to the Conservatives, in Labour-held seats, but I’ll still be pretty happy if the swing is 6.5%.
368 - MPs are very generously paid. They act as parallel citizens’ advice bureaux and lobby fodder.
Organising recycling is of real public value.
128. “30 - Sean Fear. Rod Crosby and the Labour-Tory swing in Wales since the 60s. No. This is a misreading of the data. There’s been a long-term swing from Labour to others, not directly to Tory.”
Since swing is defined solely in terms of Labour and Conservative I am absolutely correct - although of course I accept it is a simplification.
http://www.titanictown.plus.com/wales.jpg
Putting it another way, Wales has become relatively more Tory…
369.Rether good? I think you mean inspired, Churchillian, changed hearts and minds. Answered every question, with honesty, verve & never was afraid to say sorry for mistakes made.
Ok perhaps not.
371 - So why the automatic assumption that amount is not £148,000 a year?
352 The US spends twice as much of its GDP on health as the EU and yet there are millions of people who have no insurance, people are commonly turned away from hospitals because they cannot afford treatment and despite the colossal level of resourecs absorbed by the healthcare system both life expectancy and infant mortality rates are worse than in western Europe.
It is hard to see any aspect of the US system that should be copied here.
321. It is not Private, its “third sector”, its a provident society, not for profit. It’s name is British United Provident Association….
The Guardian and MandyPandy purposefully confused the issue as usual.
Hague was asked about Ashcroft and he responded several times that the issue for him was whether the noble Lord met the commitments he was asked to make - which, note, no other Labour peers were required to make.
He always replied that the LA had assured him that he had met the commitments made.
And so he has.
All the non-dom stuff is neither here nor there in that question. Because smart aleck Labour politicians thought they had stitched him up, and they hadn’t, so they simply threw the toys out of the pram in the hope one would hit him on the head in passing.
FAIL.
360 - yes, the Polish plumber is a ‘long term resident’ - not a ‘permanent’ one - which is what Ashcroft initially promised Hague - but then got the Govt to agree to ‘long term’ - re-opening the possibility of being a non-dom.
Jones on sky saying brown wiped the floor with panel !!!! what a load of rubbish he just didnt answer any question and they didnt press him for an answer.
374. And if this poll is correct, we should expect the relative Labour lead in the principality to fall further in 2010 - to around 15%…
re 308 Raven you mean smearing with the truth? Try this one
Carmel Bloom, 54, fell into a coma after Dr John Hines and Dr Paul Timmis failed to spot she was suffering from a kidney infection when she was admitted to the Bupa Roding Hospital in Ilford, Essex where she worked as an administrator.
Her death, which was investigated by police…
‘When Timmis was eventually called to the hospital by Hines, he decided to transfer the patient, known as CB, to the intensive therapy unit at Whipps Cross Hospital without effectively preparing her or sufficiently stabilising her to ensure she could withstand the transfer.
And why was a transfer necessary? Because your average private hospital doesn’t have facilities like an ITU.
Try putting BUPA death into Google and you’ll have enough to keep you going for the afternoon.
365. The letter to Hague was, shall we say interesting, but what counts is the commitment made to the appointments committee. Which, it seems was a clarification that they found acceptable.
He might, indeed should have written of that clarification to Hague. Perhaps he did and the letter was lost. But even if he didn’t it’s not the critical point.
371. Absolutely, but that attitude has been beaten out of the public sector, on the pretext of ‘discrimination’. Many public authorities have been forced to embark on ‘job evaluations’. In every single case it has resulted in massively increased wage bills.
Jobs are not evaluated on a market rate, but on an absurd systems of criteria and responsibilities.
372 I’m pretty convinced that your lot are on for a lead of around 7% in the popular vote with a superior performance in the marginals. There will be some Labour good performances that may surprise. And if the LDs remain solid it could seriously dent a Tory majority.
Events may change this.
But certainly at this stage there is nothing for any party to be too upset about. Labour should be pleased with their progress. The Tories should be pleased that they are still firmly ahead. The LDs should be pleased they’re in the debates and that Clegg seems to be able to make an impact.
377 nickc
on the other hand I don’t exactly see a long queue of other nations seeking to imitate our healthcare system either.
376 antifrank - Because I know enough about pay in the private sector (not high-paid city lawyers, of course!) to form a view, especially when you consider job security, pension rights and (I would suspect) hours worked.
364. When Rausing fills in his Tax return answering the non-dom question he has to declare that his ‘permanent’ home is not the UK…if this isn’t an issue, why did Ashcroft go to the lengths he did to get ‘permanent’ re-interpreted as ‘long term’?
387. We should copy Libya - they’ve taken Megrahi from last rights to alive for 7 more months of blissful freedom.
re 344 Hm. Tell that to the pregnant women in Fallujah or those wanting to who have been warned not to become pregnant.
381. of course the media insist on making this galdiatorial. The purpose of this inquiry is not to pin Brown (or Blair for that matter) to the wall and get them to break down sobbing saying “yes, you are right, I was so wrong to do this”. It is to learn lessons from mistakes that were made for the future. This is what Brown set it up to do.
Unfortunately the media, and partisan supporters on both sides, want it to be something it isnt and was never intended to be.
383: Private health care is probably better at somethings than others. For Cancer treatment, or serious life-threatening conditions, I’d put my hands in the NHS.
Private health care seems to be better used for quality of life/non-emergancy stuff I feel. Knee operations etc for which there can be a longer waiting list.
In other news, “Iceland’s economy grew by 3.3% in the last quarter of 2009″.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8551662.stm
Only heard bits of it today, but it sounded as though Brown was getting a very easy ride, and was thoroughly enjoying himself - in control, and full of confidence.
390. “last rights”
Atheism clearly on the march.
339 Chris A
Good insurance would allow the option to have surgery at an NHS hospital. My insurance (which wasn’t from BUPA) did. The reason for me having the insured operation outside the UK was not medical preference.
I see the BBC are as neutral as ever describing GB at the Chilcot inquiry today as “A tour de force”
Back to Ashcroft by tomorrow if they can no doubt.
390- Yes, that Al-Megrahi Libyan healthcare miracle is an inspiring one. Scottish doctors swore they would only be able to keep him alive for another three months, but the superior Libyan healthcare system has him still walking around today.
386: I agree Jonathan. Whislt the tories have let things slip, labour are still looking down the barrel of a gun at losing their majority and top party status.
I feel that it’s around a 30seat majority to tories being short by a bit.
399. “Scottish doctors swore they would only be able to keep him alive for another three months”
Link?
This should have the lefties spluttering into their organic lattes..
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/thetorydiary/2010/03/cchq-approves-strong-immigration-message-for-campaigning-in-marginal-seats.html
399 And the Oscar for “the most tenuous linked argument enabling a long standing axed to be reground” goes to Stars and Stripes.
(much applause)
Just catching up with Brown’s Chilcott inquiry appearance. I suspect that like many of Brown’s budget’s in the past, immediate reactions will give way to different perceptions once the details have been properely assimulated and checked.
Brown’s biggest problem on the funding of the Iraq war will continue to go back to the spending decisions he took back around 2003. We may have been fighting a war on Foriegn soil, but his mind was firmly on gathering a war chest for a domestic political battle within his government and in the country in 2005. He might try and spin that he wasn’t aware of real problems for another three years, conveniently post GE, and at the time he was planning to finally oust Tony Blair. Also, by 2006, we were fighting a second war in Afghanistan and that was by now beginning to dominant the news, as was military shortages on the front line.
402. Yep, as predicted, here comes the move to the right. Every recent Tory leader has succumbed to the temptation when times got tough.
389.”When Rausing fills in his Tax return answering the non-dom question he has to declare that his ‘permanent’ home is not the UK…”
Actually, it doesn’t. I can’t speak for all the various tax forms but the individual tax return asks this:
“Were you, for all or part of the year to 5 April 2009, one or
more of the following – not resident, not ordinarily resident
or not domiciled in the UK and claiming the remittance
basis; or dual resident in the UK and another country?”
To which Rausing and Ashcroft answer ‘Yes’ to being non-domiciled. Or perhaps ‘dual resident ion the UK and another country’
403- Sorry to pour a little salt on an exposed wound, Jonathan.
394
Iceland’s economy has to grow at that rate - they have a 8000 euro-per-head debt to pay off…
384. That, no doubt, is Ashcroft’s defence. The problem is his commitment to Hague, which Hague said he had met. From HMRC:
“Broadly speaking, you are domiciled in the country where you have your permanent home. Domicile is distinct from nationality or residence.”
‘Permanent’….that’s the problem.
407. A bit churlish of you to still be banging on about a convicted mass murderer being release on a false premise no ?
386 Jonathan an interesting concession from a PB leftie.
I just wonder what tomorrow’s papers might say. General consensus on here is that the doddery idiots on Chilcott didn’t land a blow on Brown because he went into Ch of Exch mode and bored them and us into submission. However journalists are being very negative and they are the ones who write the headlines in the papers.
Is it raining in London or has Kay Burley defected to the LibDems or SNP?
404 And the winner of the Oscar for “finding an angle, any angle, from which to attack Brown after a spectacularly un-newsworthy performance at Chilcott” goes to ChristinaD.
407. “Sorry to pour a little salt on an exposed wound, Jonathan.”
Indulge your imagination more like. Still waiting for the link.
“Brown is at his best with his back to the wall – as he was today at Iraq inquiry”
“This was Good Gordon as opposed to Bad Brown: firm in his views, unwavering in asserting that the cabinet had been right to back the war – and that he had never let the army down”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2010/mar/05/michael-white-gordon-brown-chilcot-inquiry
CarlottaVance March 5th, 2010 at 3:49 pm
wall… head .. stop… banging …. against
Otherwise the mother of all headaches will ensure, you know.
405 - and also as predicted, you don’t seem to grasp that immigration is a very important issue and one your Government was determined to silence by calling everyone who spoke about it racist.
414 - Michael White *snore*
411 Just telling it as I see it. Not huge news to say that the Tories are still the favorites to win the GE.
407 Exposed wound? Hardly. Last time I looked, the release had nothing to do with me. When I heard of his release I was in B&Q with kitchen cabinets. Anyway, no need to attack I was genuinely admiring your imaginative intellectual footwork.
416. “and also as predicted, you don’t seem to grasp that immigration is a very important issue and one your Government was determined to silence by calling everyone who spoke about it racist.”
Who predicted that and when? Incidentally, on the ‘your government’ bit, I have never voted Labour and I never will - and there are one or two Tory posters here who can’t claim that.
409: The only real issue of any importance here is ‘Did Lord Ashcroft meet all the undertakings expected of him by the cabinet office when he became a Lord?’
Answer=Yes.
409 Carlotta - Except that you’ve ignored two extremely important words: Broadly speaking.
Clearly there was some confusion at the time of the original commitment as to what, exactly, was intended, although the key word ‘domicile’ was not mentioned. Unsurprisingly, Lord Ashcroft’s lawyers ensured that the confusion was resolved in the final binding agreement.
Certainly Labour have a point here in respect of the confusion, but it’s pretty arcane, and in any case in political terms they’ve drowned it out with a whole heap of idiotic random mud-slinging.
410- You’re absolutely right [pausing to type for a moment, now resuming instense self-flagellation with wet spaghetti noodle].
406.
See p25 of HMRC Leaflet 6 and follow the flow chart.
1) What are your plans for the future, if it is
2) To remain in the UK, and this is,
3) A long term commitment, then,
4) You are domiciled.
To avoid this you need to declare you have ‘no firm plans’…
415 - Thank you for your concern - but there is so much nonsense out there about ‘domicile’……
Harry Reid on the floor of the Senate today: “Today is a big day in America. Only 36,000 people lost their jobs today, which is really good.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC211h9AY-4
The Dems will need to work a bit on their messaging before the mid-terms.
421
Seems to have been Hague and the Wobbler who’ve had mud slung over them - by Ashcroft and his shady goings-on. Still, Mugabe’s pledged support.
422. The trouble with S&S being so reliably wrong about most things (including even his statements of ‘fact’) is that I desperately want to believe in his Cassandra-like warnings to his ideological fellow travellers here about the Tories being on course to lose the election. Perhaps I need to put my faith firmly in the ‘broken clock, twice a day’ principle.
419 - I mistook your post for a Jonathan one, explaining the ‘your’. Apologies.
But it was fairly predictable that at some point someone would bring up the ‘lurch to the right’ comment. It’s like clockwork at election time, and ignores the fact that immigration is an issue where a large number of people feel legitimately let down and aggrieved.
374. Rod Crosby.
Your graph proves that Wales is getting gradually less Labour.
It doesn’t prove that it’s getting more Tory, relatively or otherwise!
Anthony Wells has posted re: YouGov weightings. It doesn’t seem to address the previous article on this, but is interesting on the Loyal/Disloyal category non the less:
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/2489
377 - people are commonly turned away from hospitals because they cannot afford treatment
This is an old one, and untrue - If you present at the ER, the hospital is legally obliged to treat you whether you have insurance or not.
there are millions of people who have no insurance
True, but many people under 35 or so who are not married choose not to carry health insurance as they feel (rightly or wrongly) that it is not the best way to spend their money.
Even with the new Obamacre bill ‘fining’ them for not having insurance, it’s still more cost effective to pay the fine rather than get insurance.
The net result of Obamacare and the huge cost of it will probably be something in the order of 10-15 million people getting under the insurance umbrella.
373, 376 Antifrank £147k isn’t justified for many jobs in the country. My boss the VP of development at a major multinational games company earns less than that. Then again we’re in the private sector so there’s a different set of rules for us.
How you can even begin to justify £100k+ for any public sector job that isn’t called ‘Prime Minister’ or ‘Head of the Bank of England’ is something I will never understand. Clearly there is a complete lack of value for money here, but then again that’s what Labour is all about bloat, inefficiency and job creation at the cost of higher taxes.
425 bribrad
” Mugabe pledged support” - must be galling for you I can still remember Phil Woolas campaigning for ZANU in the early eighties andhow good old Bob would make Rhodesia a better place. Some people just have no gratitude.
Shock horror for Tory ranters - Brown emerges not just unscathed but enhanced. Oh dear, back to the paranoia.
387 No, but most EU countries have systems which are much closer to our than the US system. I can’t think of any country which has moved to a state-funded free-at-the-point-of-use system that has decided to go back to a private one.
421 Richard - see 406. I suspect Ashcroft wrote his letter to Hague without seeking Tax advice, as any half way competent Tax Lawyer would have seen the booby trap in the word ‘permanent’. The issue is that implicit in ‘permanent’ is ‘domiciled’. I hold no brief for the other parties’ hypocrisy - but in this specific (and not trivial) issue the Tories have a problem - albeit probably a Westminster village one.
Apologies if already posted
Yougov explain their “tweaks”
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/2489
433. Enhanced in the eyes of who?
433 - and nothing quite gets your rocks off more than an enhanced Brown wispering sweet nothings and making you feel special, does it?
YouGov defends itself:
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/248
Supposedly making up for Kellner’s failure to address issues here earlier in the week. I’m sure there’ll be lots of fun to be had dissecting it.
402. For all those blathering on about the Tories not talking about immigration. It is all being done, under the radar this time, and it is going down VERY well.
434 nickc
most European systems have state backed though sometimes private ( with state as ultimate guarantor ) insurance schemes. They separate the payment of healthcare from the provison of healthcare. This keeps focus on value for money in the system and avoid the imbalances we have in our own health system where the provider of the service is also the person who audits himself for VFM.
Wasn’ that Peter Kellner on the Chilcot panel? And I’m sure Kirsty Wark and Jon Snow were there in disguise. What a sham!
423. To which the answer is;
2) To divide my time being resident in the UK and Belize
3) Yes
4) Non-domiciled (other conditions of non-domicile such as ties, commitments to Belize etc being satisfied as they clearly were in Ashcroft’s case)
Indeed, I can’t imagine Hans Rausing declaring each year that his plans had changed in any way and Rausing has lived here permanently and is still non-domiciled.
His status was a cause celebre over 10 years ago in the Guardian and no dobt might surface again in this row.
Ashcroft can at least show he spends a good part of his time living, as opposed to holidaying, in Belize I’m sure.
405. James Kelly.
Did you follow the link or just base your reply on the URL?
438
Apart from you,duckie
434. An NHS style system was dismantled in east Germany and replaced with the mixed system used in the western Lander. I don’t think it’s much mourned.
436: Bingo…so they have changed how they do things. That should go a long way to settling things.
I would prefer a data sample which required less weighting though.
435 “The issue is that implicit in ‘permanent’ is ‘domiciled’. I hold no brief for the other parties’ hypocrisy”
No it’s not. How many times do you have to be shown. No, it’s not.
See Hans Rausing.
444. “Did you follow the link or just base your reply on the URL?”
I followed the link. Did you have a croissant for breakfast this morning, or something more substantial?
re 430 oh come off it TimB? And what if having treated you for your heart attack they send you away to the family physician with a whole list of drugs you can’t even start to afford? Also the reason why the Americans have such a poor state of health is becuase they don’t get any preventative medicine, but only when they’re in extremis and present at A&E.
443. How is
2) To divide my time being resident in the UK and Belize
Consistent with:
“I hereby give you my clear and unequivocal assurance that I have decided to take up permanent residence in the UK again before the end of this calendar year.”
441 Yes - I would hesitate to assume that European systems are necessarily better value for money than the NHS - they are very different eg the French system operates with much smaller units, generally speaking - sole practititoner doctors, small hospitals etc - anecdotally the doctors surgeries I have visited in France are not much more than the doctor’s front room - not the kind of intermediate treatment centres that you often get in UK cities nowadays.
The NHS is pretty good IMO - so good, in fact, that the Tories see no scope for cutting its budget.
435 – Re: YouGov tracker..!
“Shortly after starting the daily polling YouGov made a slight change to their political weighting.”
Shame they waited till after they had started their reporting to change things – then fail to mention they had altered the ‘weighting’or put their hands up when their actions changed the narrative. Bad practice imo.
O/T A contact suggests that Stephen Purcell has also resigned his council seat…
Adam Boulton:
Chilcot: Doesn’t leave Gordon Brown with any more problems than he entered with.
440
Ich bin nicht ein racist aber ich bin vorried auf der shrincken poll lead. Uberfuhrer “heisse ich” Dave.
WRT Mr Megrahi, it is not only the UK (Scottish) and Libyan health systems that enter into the equation. It is far from surprising that a seriously ill man should fare better when he is:
a) not in a foreign prison;
b) not in a foreign climate;
c) not in a foreign country.
457. I think that’s what’s known as a serious answer to a very silly question.
450- There are flaws in the American healthcare system, which I don’t believe Tim B denies. Efficient and cost-effective fixes have been proposed and rejected by the Democrats. Passing Obamacare to address the system’s weaknesses, on the other hand, is like killing a fly with sledgehammer: both excessive and poorly designed to target the real problems.
d) not holding up a trade deal.
457 Somehow, AnneJGP, I would have thought that he would have acclimatised somewhat over the last 20 years or so.
Carlotta, going back to my old days of accountancy training, it is possible. To give up domicile status is not as simple as ‘permenant residence’
This article show how complicated it can be:
http://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/news/home-is-where-the-burial-plot-is/61809.article
451.
This is getting tiresome.
The Hague letter is not the point. The commitment to the appointments committee is the point.
In any event, what is permanent? He has homes in both places. Does he have to live in either for 365 days a year to be ‘permanent’?
This is an argument about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. I believe the @long term@ residency is the more honest description of his status - and the one that was seemingly agreed with the appointments committee. But living part of the year in one place and part of the year in another is not incompatible with permanent - in either.
459. “like killing a fly with sledgehammer: both excessive and poorly designed to target the real problems.”
Depends whether the fly escapes or not. I can tell you that newspapers never bloody work, so I can see where Obama is coming fron.
452 nickc
have to diagree with you nick. My experiennce of the German health care system is that it’s pretty efficient likewise France.
My father who suffers from Parkinsons was taken in to hospital in the UK and almost died becasue the nursing staff refused to offer any basic care. It wasn’t the drugs, they just wouldn’t feed him or give him a drink. They stuck a meal in front of an 82 year old man who needs assistance to eat and then just walked away. came back half an hour later and said “oh not hungry then”. He was a skeleton when he left hospital and only survived because my 80 year old mother who had been a nurse, fed him enough to keep him alive.
Large patches of the NHS are substantially below par and the only reason people in the UK put up with it is they know nothing better.
To illustrate the difficulty of drawing firm conclusions from polls such as these.
Comparing this YouGov with the Kalman-filtered national polls (mostly Yougov) for the same mid-point day, 2nd March - in other words the near-perfect comparison scenario - the “extra” 2.3% swing in Wales does not quite come up to the ordinary level of statistical significance (alpha=11.4%).
However, I do believe the swing will be higher in Wales…
456 ” I thank God I wore my corset,for I fear my sides have split.”
455. Chiclot never was going to be abig deal for Brown, Gab’s.
So thats Chilcot done, just got the budget to go and then we’re there. Off to the Palace.
449. James Kelly.
Did you actually read the article? If so, why are you misrepresenting it as being a decision from the leader when it isn’t even a decision from CCHQ?
467
Danke
http://news.stv.tv/scotland/west-central/161705-steven-purcell-resigns-as-councillor/
NOTW should be interesting
428. Yawn…
Yes it is getting more Tory, relative to Labour.
Not absolutely, but relatively…
471 - “STV News revealed yesterday that Lothian and Borders police officers were called in to search for the council leader after he disappeared on Sunday from the clinic.
Police confirmed in a statement on Thursday: “A 37-year-old man was reported missing in the Borders area on Sunday, February 28, 2010. While a search was being organised, the man returned.”
Most odd !
472: You’re starting to split hairs on this issue, both of you. Labour down, others (including tory) up. There…sorted.
439 Stephan Shakespeare is out as well defending Yougov as well.
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/centreright/2010/03/it-is-because-we-constantly-update-that-we-remain-reliably-accurate.html
Reading the Wells piece I’m starting to see what they are doing and I’m even less convinced about their polls now…..
borrowed from bob from devon bbc hys
Gordon Brown said “weapons of mass destruction were not the main reason he backed the war - it was Iraq’s disregard for UN resolutions”.
Correct me if I’m wrong but this is not a reason to start a war and indulge in regime change. If Gordon Brown supported the war because of Saddam’s disregard for the UN then perhaps he should be appearing before the War Crimes Commission rather than the Chilcott enquiry.
mmm why didnt the panel ask more questions re this.
It just gets worse
Haven’t heard Whelan, Dromey or Simpson twittering over the continual screwing of Cadbury workers.
Still can’t understand why Mandelson didn’t get the pension regulator to sort this out in advance. He really is useless.
http://www.birminghampost.net/birmingham-business/birmingham-business-news/businesslatest/2010/03/05/cadbury-workers-asked-to-increase-pensions-payments-65233-25971341/
The SNP have learned the hard way that doctors’ gloomy prognoses that stand to benefit their patients materially will leave those who rely on them looking like fools.
469. “Did you actually read the article? If so, why are you misrepresenting it as being a decision from the leader when it isn’t even a decision from CCHQ?”
Is this your indirect way of telling us you disapprove of the decision? By the way, you haven’t answered the croissant question yet - if you really want more titbits about how I’ve spent my day, fair’s fair and all that.
465 Well that was obviously a bad experience - no system is perfect, but I frankly doubt that the French or German systems are so good that they never, ever make similar mistakes. I seem to remember that the French system managed to let a large number of elderly people die of dehydration in Paris during the last major heatwave. Health outcomes in the UK are generally similar to those in France and Germany, and much better than in the US.
471. Great stuff - happy with my 5/2 punt
Rod, what do you think about the Conservative poll lead becoming stable this week for the first week this year? Is swingback beginning to hit the buffers?
476. trisha bethnal green
The UN resolutions were about WMD.
478. “The SNP have learned the hard way that doctors’ gloomy prognoses that stand to benefit their patients materially will leave those who rely on them looking like fools.”
But enough of Steven Purcell’s misfortunes and the SNP’s prospects in the forthcoming council by-election…
481.
http://twitter.com/journodave
Can’t comment on Purcell’s resignation due to the nature of a related story that could break within the next few hours. Huge story.
less than a minute ago via web
475. One thing I find confusing is why they would need to re-weight having done so well on the London mayoral election - and silenced their critics and crushed their competitors in doing so.
482. A pause is not a stop.
Polls narrowing, Ashcroft worrying, policies wobbling, Ken Clarke putting-foot-in, Mugabe admiring, media focussing, economy brightening, Brown strengthening. It’s immigration time!
453. The Tories have *never* cut the NHS budget.
476: Oh I understand what they’re doing….their system is bringing in more people which may or may not be selected for a political poll. The problem is they aren’t getting enough of the correct demographic to fill their quota required.
Have to go away and think about this.
484 gabble
Gordon Brown said “weapons of mass destruction were not the main reason he backed the war - it was Iraq’s disregard for UN resolutions”.
so why did brown say the above?
487: It’s not a re-weight as such. It’s a change in their selection process leading to a need to re-weight more.
480 nickc
obviously no system is perfect but the incidences of poor care in the NHS are larger from what I can see. I have not seen a Staffordshire hospital type incident in France or Germany. The NHS suffers from the producer knows best mentality. No-one ever seems to get sacked for poor performance and if they do they go with a big payoff and into another part of the health service.
488. We’ll see.
486 - it now says
‘Shocked about the information that I’ve been given, trying to confirm, but due to nature of it I can’t risk putting it out there.’
less than 20 seconds ago via web
489 bribrad
you don’t want to talk to your voters about it, but Nick Griffin will. Just watch the result on polling day.
489 Do you even believe the stuff you come out with?!?!
I know Whelan/McDoom look after their own, but I mean do you actually think anyone on this forum will be influenced by your drivel? It amazes me that people like you still exist, absolutely deluded, maybe you should go on this year’s X-Factor and plead to Simon about how music is your life, it seems to be about your level…
493. Caveman’s post on that thread is interesting -
‘Thanks Anthony. Your comment to the effect that what is important is that the demographics of the sample are representative AFTER weighting is obviously key.
To that end, I note you still weight total Labour ID to 32%, and your own stats confirm that only 72% of people who said they identified with the Labour party said they actually voted for the Labour party in 2005.
This would imply you should be weighting Loyal Labour ID to 23% (32% x 72%) and the Dis Loyal ID to 9%.
This correlates closely with ICM, Populus and ComRes who weight Labour 2005 voters to 22% of their samples.
However, your own daily polls show you are weighting Loyal Labour ID to 26% (+3%) and Dis-Loyal to 6% (-3%). Please can you explain the reason for the difference, as it is strange that you are having to reweight up Loyal ID whilst Disloyal ID often requires rewighting down, and implies that a split closer to 23%:9% is more appropriate.’
392. trisha bethnal green: “so why did brown say the above?”
He didn’t, ‘bob from devon’ did.
496. Of course it may or may not be the same shocking story I heard !
473. You can yawn all you like Rod Crosby.
Of course a straight swing calculation for Wales since the 60s will produce a positive number for the Tories.
My contention is that using such a statistic obscures the true picture rather than illuminating it.
497. I’d wager Brown would see a hung parliament with Cruddas going down to Griffin as a win-win.
Scottish labour scandal..tasty..
501. Is this still the thing that made you interested in the Linlithgow odds?
486. Being a council leader is probably one of the most stressful political jobs outside of Government. *far* more stressful then being a backbench MP, which is largely one giant ego trip. Probably the equivalent of being a junior minister, with a very small number authorities (i include Glasgow and Birmingham in that), that probably moves up to cabinet minister levels of stress and work load.
503 cruddas is not up against griffen is he?
502. Wait a minute. Are you having a debate with RodCrosby and Rod is on the side of something going better for the Conservatives? :O I’ve posted here for nearly three years - Thats got to be a first!
504. For sheer unpleasantness and sordidness the Scottish Labour Party simply can’t be beaten.
505. I respect OGH too much to comment - looks like that twitter account is one to watch.
Who’s the current MP for Linlithgow? Michael Connarty I beleive.
494 I don’t think we in the UK would know if there was a Staffordshire hospital-type incident in another country - the media carries hardly any foreign stories unless they involve UK citizens. And many countries do not have UK-style audit and inspection systems (or UK-style media) and any failure would be covered up rather tha publicised.
Despite the media stereotypes it is much easier to sack bureaucrats for poor performance in the UK than most countries - in France it is almost impossible (and certainly unheard of) to sack civil servants.
480. James Kelly: Is this your indirect way of telling us you disapprove of the decision?
No, it’s my direct way of pointing out that for whatever reason, you are characterising a decision by a local candidate as a decision by Cameron.
Now, why might you have done that?
I asked the question because the headline doesn’t match the article.
500 gabble lol
bob from devon, quoted what brown said, i would imagine there will be a transcript you can check
hehe..as i write sky news interviewing a man saying same, wonder if it’s bob. lol
‘any failure would be covered up rather tha publicised’
Ah yes those dirty foreigners aren’t open and democractic like what we are, eh? What a ridiculous, insular, post.
Oh Dear
Purcell resigns now.
Last thing GB needed.
Hearing the Purcell resignation is down to “chemical dependancy”
Hmmmmm
63. LondonStatto, things look more ominous than at any time since 1976.
In this brilliant article find detail and originality.
‘Britain Grapples With Debt of Greek Proportions’ by Landon Thomas Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/business/global/03pound.html
464. So you say….however, since Hague was only aware ‘a couple of months ago’ about Ashcroft’s domicile status, presumably the only ‘commitments’ he was aware of Ashcroft having ‘fully complied with’ were those ion the letter to him….so, Ashcroft is the knave and Hague the fool? If ‘permanent’ and ‘long term’, ‘mean the same thing’….why did Ashcroft get it changed?
481 - Health outcomes in the UK are generally similar to those in France and Germany, and much better than in the US.
a link or some data would be nice to back up such an extravagant claim….
I’m not going to suggest for a minute that the US system is anywhere near perfect - far from it. The two biggest problems it has are cost of care, and the cost of lawsuits. Obamacare does nothing about either.
What it does do is gut Medicare, Medicaid, the prescription plans and achieves its budget figures via (and this will be familiar to UK readers) resolving inefficiencies and saving costs. This the ‘think of a number’ method of budgeting.
The CBO says that if IF these savings are made then it may be cost neutral. But we all know efficiencies and savings in public programs don’t happen.
Another clue - one of the requirements for putting a bill through the reconciliation process is that it must have a substantial effect on the government’s budget - which would not apply to a revenue neutral bill.
I am not interested in a slanging match as to which is ‘better’ - the NHS or the US system. I have half a lifetime experience of the NHS, and half of the US system. So I have much personal experience of both.
517 Hmmmmm
mmm i wonder where this will lead the MSM?
I have no idea what this Purcell story is, but given what journalists are saying, it sounds absolutely massive.
Janet Daley : “The truth about the Tories’ private polls”
Over at ConservativeHome, Tim Montgomerie notes the new polling arrangements at CCHQ: the Populus organisation run by Tory modernisers has lost its monopoly of internal polling. The party will now be using opinion-gathering information from YouGov as well.
…“We in the Tory party have to drop all those issues (immigration, Europe, etc) that were previously strongly associated with us because our traditional image is so hated by the voters.”
The definitive proof of this particular hatred for the Tories was that when voters were presented with Conservative policies that were not identified with the party, they approved of them. But when told that these were “Conservative” policies, they rejected them. Hence, the existing Conservative “brand” was irretrievably damaged.
…the very same principle applied to Labour. When the public was offered what were in fact Labour policies but which were not idenitified as such, they approved of them. When told that these were official Labour policies, they said they disliked them. So where exactly does that leave us?
CCHQ may be in more need of fresh new polling advice than it would want to admit.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/janetdaley/100028597/tory-moderniser-myths-no-102/
518: According to tim, theres nothing to worry about…those nasty bankers are all in a conspiracy of ‘doing Britain down’.
519. Horse. Dead. Stop. Flogging.
512 nickc
well I lived in Germany for 5 years and France for 3. Health care stories in the press were usually about funding or a decline in standards. They weren’t about mass deaths.
As for sacking bureaucrats yes it’s easier here, but it doesn’t seem to have much downside. The Staffordshire CEO walked off with a huge payout and a big pension - where’s the penalty in that ?
523. It’s a cracker.
513. “No”
Then why are you so keen to distance both Cameron and CCHQ from it, if it’s a laudable decision in your view?
I note no progress on the croissant front. I genuinely asked it as an innocent enough question, but from your silence I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve unwittingly stumbled on something here…
O/T betting post (horse racing)
If anyone wants a free tenner (or thereabouts)?
Betfair are offering 15 quid cashback when you place £30 worth of tote bets. So back an odds on favourite on their tote section, then lay off 90% of your stake (the odds tend to vary a bit) on the standard exchange, then get the cashback win or lose. I think you need to opt in to the offer somewhere on their website. Phreee moneeey!
481 - Health outcomes in the UK are generally similar to those in France and Germany,”
So why are UK death rates from Cdiff and MRSA so much worse in the UK?
New thread on YouGov weightings
So Chillcott drops off the political radar. From the journos a mixture of boredom, frustration and some reasonable write-ups. From the few people I have heard who have contacted R5L the primary complaint was that he didn’t answer the questions asked. Plus ca change etc…
528 - he’s been discovered to be a nom-dom?
On the NHS or public spending generally I like to compare it to my job (software engineer). I used to work making PC games an area where power would increase every year at around 50% but we never made 50% gains in performance. All that happened is we took more for granted and our code became more and more inefficient and our performance gains were nowhere near the amount power increased every year. This is summarised by Wirth’s Law.
I moved to a console developer last year and have been working with limited resources (console development has fixed resources as you can’t change hardware until the end of the generation). We have to innovate everyday to get more out of what we have available, recently we pioneered a new method of AA that will be implemented in a game in the coming month. Before we started we were told it was impossible to do, but with hard work and a lot of research we did it, underbudget on hardware it is technically impossible to do on.
The problem with the public sector is that productivity decreases at a faster rate than money increases. To paraphrase Wirth.
529. James Kelly: Then why are you so keen to distance both Cameron and CCHQ from it, if it’s a laudable decision in your view?
Stop putting words in my mouth. I have at no point stated my view on the decision.
So…
How is this fact — YouGove doing part of CCHQ private polling — influencing the Tories’ campaign?
Notting Hill police have issued an urgent appeal in the hunt for a missing local resident. The man is described as “a bit posh but shifty with it”, with a bright ,shiny face described as “airbrushed” by one local. He is believed to be wearing an Eton jacket over a pair of what are apparently known as “Bullingdon Club Slacks” and a black fox-hunter’s cap. He is believed to have last been seen some days ago when a business associate identified only as “A” allegedly failed to pay an outstanding bill of some considerable size. There has been local speculation that the missing man found this distressing as he had an unblemished record of openness and transparency in his personal life .
When last seen he was heard to mumble something about having to find some “policies” but it is not clear what he could have meant by this as no one could recall him mentioning anything about this in the past. Police and local residents are keen to find him before any harm can occur as he and a mysterious friend known locally as “Young George” have apparently recently shared the common delusion that they ought to be “running the country”. Can you help?
502. Well, since I agree with you, I don’t know what all the fuss was about!
The relative gap between Labour and Tories in Wales is a lot smaller now than it was 50 years ago - that, like it or not, equates mathematically to a swing to the Tories. However, that swing has not (yet) translated into a large trawl of seats for the Tories, due to electoral bias within Wales, the fact that the relative gap in Wales, despite its narrowing, is still a large one, and the inconvenient fact that the Tories are still not performing that well across Great Britain as a whole…
Thought Brown gave a good performance at the enquiry today, exceeding my expectations. He did very well.
That said, Brown really hasn’t answered the charge that he underfunded the military, and his refusal to accept what many others have said was disappointing. In that respect he is still very much in denial, not to the extent that Blair and Campbell are, but still in denial. With an election due soon, he is still looking to cover his backside and shift the blame onto the military, which struck me as a bit low.
Still, I don’t think he did himself any damage, and while the central charge of underfunding remains against him, today was a good performance.
536. “Stop putting words in my mouth.”
Funnily enough, I could have said exactly the same thing at many points in this exchange.
521 I would like to clarify that by “health outcomes” I mean life expectancy and infant mortality. There are loads of other statistics which can be used to make any argument you like, but life expectancy and infant mortality are the two most basic health statistics and 2008 WHO life expectancy is France 80.7, UK 79.4, Germany 79.4, US 78.2. Infant mortality (death before age 1 per 1000 live births) is France 4.2, Germany 4.3, UK 4.8 and US 6.3.
541. James Kelly.
You’re a disgrace. I don’t know why I even bothered.
Go on, go back you your 42nd best blog and have a whinge about me.
541. James Kelly.
You’re a disgrace. I don’t know why I even bothered.
Go on, go back to your 42nd best blog and have a whinge about me.
The Lib Dems are doing so badly in Wales because they mucked up several coalition deals in 2007 in the Welsh Assembly. They closed a door on a coalition with Welsh Labour, and then the AMs voted down a coalition between the Welsh Conservative Party, Plaid and the Welsh Lib Dems. They becamse a bit of a joke after that.
From that YouGov link.
It seems if you have told them you are over 55, change it to 33 !!!!
YouGov switch
So last autumn YouGov switched to a new system. Now people are sent a non-specific invite and, when they arrive at the YouGov system, they are allocated to whichever survey needs someone in their demographic group (for example, were I to arrive at the site the system would look at all the open surveys and see which one’s quotas were most in need of a 25-40, middle-class, Times reading man from the South East, and send me over there). What this means is that surveys don’t get excess replies, respondents never get sent away empty handed, and that even very fast surveys get an even mix of fast and slow respondents, allowing accurate one day surveys.
However, because you can’t tell who is going to respond to which survey, it also makes it more difficult to calculate the proportions of people to invite to get a sample that needs the least possible amount of weighting – hence the slightly higher levels of weighting (though it’s worth saying they remain relatively low compared to some of the weights needed for quasi-random samples).
They’ll come down over time as the panel team get used to the patterns of response amongst different groups (looking at recent results, for example, we could probably do with inviting fewer men over 55 – too many are responding!) but in the meantime the effect upon polls should be just to make them a tiny bit more volatile.
544. “You’re a disgrace. I don’t know why I even bothered.
Go on, go back to your 42nd best blog and have a whinge about me.”
Funnily enough, with that gratuitous personal insult you’ve just proved the very point I made in my 42nd best blog. But we’ve established that a) you’re read my blog, and b) you’ve got something mysterious to hide about croissants, so if nothing else we’ve learned that much as a result of your decision to start what would otherwise have been a pointless exchange. I’m indebted to you.
362 - “Robert Fox:
Brilliant politics on Brown’s part.
by Gabble March 5th, 2010 at 3:27 pm”
You seem to have missed most of what he said gabbs.
Strangely you left out all the negative stuff.
Just an honest mistake on your part i’m sure
ZNL is all about ethnically cleansing their traditional voters and replacing them with a shiny new multi-cultural working class. Prescott was kept at the centre of government for lulling purposes.
If 3/4 of the shadow cabinet were closet euro-quislings then Hague would be playing the same role for them and has no chance of being sacked even if there was a good reason.
Apart from that they’d be dumb to sack him because he makes Cameron and Osborne look less young (or less posh depending on which bothers you).
549 (cont) Thuogh actually if they were trying to lose… hmm.
Let’s assume Labour will lose Cardiff North, Vale of Glamorgan and Carmarthen West to the Tories. Wales is largely full of Labour strongholds.
I think the only interesting seats are these 5:
Anglesey (Lab -> PC?)
Conwy (Lab -> Con?)
Vale of Clwyd (Lab -> Con?)
Ceredigion (Lib -> PC?)
Brecon & Radnor (Lib -> Con?)