General Election 2010

[Christmas Tree 4725]

The Desperate Party

 

Labour Ministers urge voters to vote AGAINST Labour candidates to keep the Conservatives out.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/ele...010/8658694.stm

 

This is why they have to go. The likes of Ed no Balls and Peter Hain so desperate to keep their noses in the trough that they want voters to vote against new Labour candidates.

 

Get Rid

 

Naah, tactical voting makes perfect sense in constituencies where the party in question can't feasibly win. I suspect most potential Lib Dem voters believe in progressive politics and will be most concerned with keeping the tories out. More importantly though, the Conservatives still believe in heriditary peerage and are against electoral reform on any terms. The Lib Dems realistically need a hung parliament and a coalition with Labour for electoral reform to happen.

 

 

Tell all that to the Toontastic Labour candidate (forgets her name) who has probably been working her ass off for the last year to get elected and now finds her own bosses asking voters to vote against her.

[Guest alex]

The Desperate Party

 

Labour Ministers urge voters to vote AGAINST Labour candidates to keep the Conservatives out.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/ele...010/8658694.stm

 

This is why they have to go. The likes of Ed no Balls and Peter Hain so desperate to keep their noses in the trough that they want voters to vote against new Labour candidates.

 

Get Rid

 

Naah, tactical voting makes perfect sense in constituencies where the party in question can't feasibly win. I suspect most potential Lib Dem voters believe in progressive politics and will be most concerned with keeping the tories out. More importantly though, the Conservatives still believe in heriditary peerage and are against electoral reform on any terms. The Lib Dems realistically need a hung parliament and a coalition with Labour for electoral reform to happen.

 

 

Tell all that to the Toontastic Labour candidate (forgets her name) who has probably been working her ass off for the last year to get elected and now finds her own bosses asking voters to vote against her.

It's a safe Labour seat though so they won't be.

[Meenzer 15531]

The Desperate Party

 

Labour Ministers urge voters to vote AGAINST Labour candidates to keep the Conservatives out.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/ele...010/8658694.stm

 

This is why they have to go. The likes of Ed no Balls and Peter Hain so desperate to keep their noses in the trough that they want voters to vote against new Labour candidates.

 

Get Rid

 

Naah, tactical voting makes perfect sense in constituencies where the party in question can't feasibly win. I suspect most potential Lib Dem voters believe in progressive politics and will be most concerned with keeping the tories out. More importantly though, the Conservatives still believe in heriditary peerage and are against electoral reform on any terms. The Lib Dems realistically need a hung parliament and a coalition with Labour for electoral reform to happen.

 

 

Tell all that to the Toontastic Labour candidate (forgets her name) who has probably been working her ass off for the last year to get elected and now finds her own bosses asking voters to vote against her.

 

Aye, because Houghton and Sunderland South is a Lib-Con marginal. Did you actually read the article?

[Renton 21627]

The Desperate Party

 

Labour Ministers urge voters to vote AGAINST Labour candidates to keep the Conservatives out.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/ele...010/8658694.stm

 

This is why they have to go. The likes of Ed no Balls and Peter Hain so desperate to keep their noses in the trough that they want voters to vote against new Labour candidates.

 

Get Rid

 

Naah, tactical voting makes perfect sense in constituencies where the party in question can't feasibly win. I suspect most potential Lib Dem voters believe in progressive politics and will be most concerned with keeping the tories out. More importantly though, the Conservatives still believe in heriditary peerage and are against electoral reform on any terms. The Lib Dems realistically need a hung parliament and a coalition with Labour for electoral reform to happen.

 

 

Tell all that to the Toontastic Labour candidate (forgets her name) who has probably been working her ass off for the last year to get elected and now finds her own bosses asking voters to vote against her.

 

Bridget? She's representing Sunderland South, one of Labour's safest seats. I'd urge LD supporters to vote for her there, just to be absolutely certain though (more to keep out BNP than the Cons though).

[Billy Castell 0]

The Tories are pricks, who'll say anything to get the coveted majority. They have gone nowhere near addressing the debt problem, whilst promising everyone a free kitten and simultainiously making cuts from somewhere with the magic Sword of Efficiecy unearthed near Wapping.

 

Labour are fucking wank. They're a burnt out car on bricks. They've fucked it all up, been as bad as the Tories in terms of greed and being bummed by the rich and priviliged, and have let Murdoch jizz all over them. They have no clue, and need to be put down.

 

The Lib Dems? Well, I'd vote for them if only to try and provide a new dynamic to politics, and to attempt to break the 'Labservative' monotony. Voting for them may help bring about the much needed voting reform at least.

[Gemmill 44900]

I had no idea Bridget was a candidate. Things are looking up for Houghton's goth population.

[Renton 21627]

Are Sunderland South traditionally the first to declare or is that Sunderland Central?

[Gemmill 44900]

Dunno but if she gets in, I'm going to the Echo with the revelation that she doesn't wash her hands after weeing.

[Renton 21627]

Dunno but if she gets in, I'm going to the Echo with the revelation that she doesn't wash her hands after weeing.

 

She probably stands to wipe too. Anyway, good of you not to sell your story to the Sun before the election.

[Meenzer 15531]

Are Sunderland South traditionally the first to declare or is that Sunderland Central?

South. So Bridget's count should be live on telly. (I said count.)

[Craig 6682]

Are Sunderland South traditionally the first to declare or is that Sunderland Central?

South. So Bridget's count should be live on telly. (I said count.)

 

 

As for CT bringing up Bridget's constituency as an example of one where Ed Balls is asking Labour supporters to vote Lib Dem, you couldn't have picked a safer Labour seat you crack-head!

 

FWIW I think it's a weak tactic from them but it's not something the Tories wouldn't do if the roles were reversed. Just further highlights how divided this country is. To have any chance of remaining in power, Labour need the Lib Dems to win the Tory/Lib Dem marginals so you can understand the reasoning behind it.

[Renton 21627]

Aye Craig but as I said it suits the LibDems too because they have no chance of winning the election outright, and there will be no electoral reform following a Conservative majority. The editorial from the IoS I posted earlier was spot on its analysis imo.

Edited May 4, 2010 by Renton

[Christmas Tree 4725]

There's lots of Bridgets out there. Each one is someones daughter, sister or mum.... Sniff sniff...

[Guest alex]

There's lots of Bridgets out there. Each one is someones daughter, sister or mum.... Sniff sniff...

And? I don't see your point really. They aren't being stitched up because they've no chance of winning anyway. They knew that when they started campaigning. And whatever keeps the Tories out of power as far as I'm concerned, mainly because of their disdain for where I live.

[Happy Face 29]

Warmongers of the world, unite

 

Is there any difference between Australia’s leaders and the three front-runners in Britain’s election when it comes to attitudes to war?

 

Staring at the vast military history section of the airport shop, I had a choice: the derring-do of psychopaths or scholarly tomes with their illicit devotion to the cult of organised killing. There was nothing I recognised from reporting war. Nothing on the spectacle of children's limbs hanging in trees and nothing on the burden of shit in your trousers. War is a good read. War is fun. More war, please.

 

On 25 April, the day before I flew out of Australia, I sat in a bar beneath the great sails of the Sydney Opera House. It was Anzac Day, the 95th anniversary of the invasion of Ottoman Turkey by Australian and New Zealand troops at the behest of British imperialism. The landing was an incompetent stunt of blood sacrifice conjured by Winston Churchill, yet it is celebrated in Australia as an unofficial national day. The ABC evening news always comes live from the sacred shore at Gallipoli, where, this year, as many as 8,000 flag-wrapped Antipodeans listened, dewy-eyed, to the Australian governor general, Quentin Bryce, who is the Queen's viceroy, describe the point of pointless mass killing. It was, she said, all about a "love of nation, of service, of family, the love we allow ourselves to receive. [it is a love that] rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. And it never fails."

 

You'll be a man, my son

Of all the attempts at justifying state murder I can recall, this drivel of DIY therapy, clearly aimed at the young, takes the blue riband. Not once did Bryce honour the fallen with the two words that the survivors of 1915 brought home with them: "Never again." Not once did she refer to a truly heroic anti-conscription campaign, led by women, that stemmed the flow of Australian blood in the First World War, the product not of a gormlessness that "believes all things", but of anger in defence of life.

 

The next item on the TV news was the Australian defence minister, John Faulkner, with the troops in Afghanistan. Bathed in the light of a perfect sunrise, he made the Anzac connection to the illegal invasion of Afghanistan in which, on 12 February last year, Australian soldiers killed fivechildren. No mention was made of them. On cue, this was followed by an item that a war memorial in Sydney had been "defaced by men of Middle Eastern appearance". More war, please.

 

In the bar of the Opera House, a young man wore campaign medals that were not his. That is the fashion now. Smashing his beer glass on the floor, he stepped over the mess, which was cleaned up by another young man who the TV newsreader would say was of Middle Eastern appearance. Once again, war is a fashionable extremism for those suckered by the Edwardian notion that a man needs to prove himself "under fire" in a country whose people he derides as "gooks" or "ragheads" or simply "scum". (The current public inquiry in London into the torture and murder of an Iraqi hotel receptionist, Baha Mousa, by British troops has heard that "the attitude held" was that "all Iraqis were scum".)

 

There is a hitch. In this, the ninth year of the thoroughly Edwardian invasion of Afghan­istan, more than two-thirds of the home populations of the invaders want their troops to get out of where they have no right to be. This is true of Australia, the United States, Britain, Canada and Germany. What this says is that, be­hind the media façade of politicised ritual - such as the parade of coffins through Wootton Bassett - millions of people are trusting their own critical and moral intelligence and ignoring propaganda that has militarised contemporary history, journalism and parliamentary politics - Australia's Labor prime minister, Kevin Rudd, for instance, describes the military as his country's "highest calling".

 

Here in Britain, Polly Toynbee anoints the war criminal Tony Blair as "the perfect emblem for his people's own contradictory whims". No, he was the perfect emblem for a liberal intelligentsia prepared cynically to indulge his crime. That is the unsaid of the British election campaign, along with the fact that 77 per cent of the British people want the troops home. In Iraq, duly forgotten, what has been done is a holocaust. More than a million people are dead and four million have been driven from their homes. Not a single mention has been made

of them in the entire campaign. Rather, the news is that Blair is Labour's "secret weapon".

 

All three party leaders are warmongers. Nick Clegg, the darling of former Blair lovers, says that, as prime minister, he will "participate" in another invasion of a "failed state" provided there is "the right equipment, the right resources". His one reservation is the standard genuflection towards a military now scandal­ised by a colonial cruelty of which the Baha Mousa case is but one of many.

 

For Clegg, as for Brown and Cameron, the horrific weapons used by British forces, such as cluster bombs, depleted uranium and the Hellfire missile, which sucks the air out of its victims' lungs, do not exist. The limbs of children in trees do not exist. This year alone, Britain will spend £4bn on the war in Afghanistan. That is what Brown and Cameron almost certainly intend to cut from the health service.

 

Edward S Herman explained this genteel extremism in his essay "The Banality of Evil". There is a strict division of labour, ranging from the scientists working in the laboratories of the weapons industry, to the intelligence and "national security" personnel who supply the paranoia and "strategies", to the politicians who approve them. As for journalists, our task is to censor by omission and make the crime seem normal for you, the public. For, above all, it is your understanding and your awakening that are feared.

 

http://www.newstatesman.com/international-...stralia-british

[Craig 6682]

There's lots of Bridgets out there. Each one is someones daughter, sister or mum.... Sniff sniff...

And? I don't see your point really. They aren't being stitched up because they've no chance of winning anyway. They knew that when they started campaigning. And whatever keeps the Tories out of power as far as I'm concerned, mainly because of their disdain for where I live.

 

A good deal of MPs out there are not representing the first seat they stood for. Blair stood for Beaconsfield in a 1982 by-election and lost his deposit. They all see it as character building.

 

You're demonstrating one of the biggest problems of society today CT - this ridiculous idealolgy that people shouldn't put themselves/be put into a position where they'd lose. There's no longer a sports day at my kid's school because 'it's unfair on those who don't win'.

 

Utter shite! How can you ever appreciate winning anything if you don't know what it's like to lose?

[Renton 21627]

There's lots of Bridgets out there. Each one is someones daughter, sister or mum.... Sniff sniff...

And? I don't see your point really. They aren't being stitched up because they've no chance of winning anyway. They knew that when they started campaigning. And whatever keeps the Tories out of power as far as I'm concerned, mainly because of their disdain for where I live.

 

A good deal of MPs out there are not representing the first seat they stood for. Blair stood for Beaconsfield in a 1982 by-election and lost his deposit. They all see it as character building.

 

You're demonstrating one of the biggest problems of society today CT - this ridiculous idealolgy that people shouldn't put themselves/be put into a position where they'd lose. There's no longer a sports day at my kid's school because 'it's unfair on those who don't win'.

 

Utter shite! How can you ever appreciate winning anything if you don't know what it's like to lose?

 

CT knows exactly what it's like to lose an argument tbf.

[Christmas Tree 4725]

There's lots of Bridgets out there. Each one is someones daughter, sister or mum.... Sniff sniff...

And? I don't see your point really. They aren't being stitched up because they've no chance of winning anyway. They knew that when they started campaigning. And whatever keeps the Tories out of power as far as I'm concerned, mainly because of their disdain for where I live.

 

 

Are you sure

 

Gordon Brown told GMTV he did not back tactical voting and wanted people to "vote Labour".

[Christmas Tree 4725]

There's lots of Bridgets out there. Each one is someones daughter, sister or mum.... Sniff sniff...

And? I don't see your point really. They aren't being stitched up because they've no chance of winning anyway. They knew that when they started campaigning. And whatever keeps the Tories out of power as far as I'm concerned, mainly because of their disdain for where I live.

 

A good deal of MPs out there are not representing the first seat they stood for. Blair stood for Beaconsfield in a 1982 by-election and lost his deposit. They all see it as character building.

 

You're demonstrating one of the biggest problems of society today CT - this ridiculous idealolgy that people shouldn't put themselves/be put into a position where they'd lose. There's no longer a sports day at my kid's school because 'it's unfair on those who don't win'.

 

Utter shite! How can you ever appreciate winning anything if you don't know what it's like to lose?

 

 

Alas dear craig your comparison is pants

 

There is nothing wrong with losing but as a parent you wouldnt shout and support his classmate over your own son and hoped your own son lost.

[Guest alex]

There's lots of Bridgets out there. Each one is someones daughter, sister or mum.... Sniff sniff...

And? I don't see your point really. They aren't being stitched up because they've no chance of winning anyway. They knew that when they started campaigning. And whatever keeps the Tories out of power as far as I'm concerned, mainly because of their disdain for where I live.

 

 

Are you sure

 

Gordon Brown told GMTV he did not back tactical voting and wanted people to "vote Labour".

Well, I think the people in question would known they aren't going to win if they are opposing an MP in a very safe seat. Not sure how that quote from Brown is meant to suggest otherwise. If you're now saying Labour aren't urging people to vote tactically and using Brown's quote as evidence then that contradicts your previous point about them being so desperate they need to do that though, doesn't it?

Edited May 4, 2010 by alex

[Craig 6682]

There's lots of Bridgets out there. Each one is someones daughter, sister or mum.... Sniff sniff...

And? I don't see your point really. They aren't being stitched up because they've no chance of winning anyway. They knew that when they started campaigning. And whatever keeps the Tories out of power as far as I'm concerned, mainly because of their disdain for where I live.

 

A good deal of MPs out there are not representing the first seat they stood for. Blair stood for Beaconsfield in a 1982 by-election and lost his deposit. They all see it as character building.

 

You're demonstrating one of the biggest problems of society today CT - this ridiculous idealolgy that people shouldn't put themselves/be put into a position where they'd lose. There's no longer a sports day at my kid's school because 'it's unfair on those who don't win'.

 

Utter shite! How can you ever appreciate winning anything if you don't know what it's like to lose?

 

 

Alas dear craig your comparison is pants

 

There is nothing wrong with losing but as a parent you wouldnt shout and support his classmate over your own son and hoped your own son lost.

 

It wasn't a comparison. It was an expansion on my belief that society today wraps people up in cotton wool. You're (or at least I think you are) suggesting that we show sympathy towards those who stand in elections that they stand little chance of winning.

 

You claim that they're being 'stitched up' yet no-one holds a gun to their head and tells them they have to stand for the seat. They've actually had to campaign to be the nomination for the constituency.

[Meenzer 15531]

I may be a last-minute floating voter after all...

 

[Renton 21627]

[Holden McGroin 6587]

I still haven't worked out if CT just likes to be obtuse or actually believes in what he writes.

[Park Life 71]

I still haven't worked out if CT just likes to be obtuse or actually believes in what he writes.

 

He's just a deluded bufoon, leave it at that really.