DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived post-Murdoch era

That means he votes UKIP.

in 2010?! nah he's a good bloke honest guv

xp otm, plus his agent has quietly pointed out that being too politically partisan might damage earnings potential and value of image rights

googling steve davis ukip produces an actual ukip candidate of that name

Yeah, seems like a good bloke, he's also a major soul/ funk fan too, that's actually how he got into prog believe it or not! Soul -> jazz funk -> jazz rock -> prog, was how it went I believe.

he bloody loves magma

Whoever said he was boring!

I'm sure he was at a Tory conference in the 80s talking about "potting reds", how we laughed.

Enoch Powell was a massive fan of King Crimson as well, true gent.

rivers of blood, sweat and tears

ILX memes we have known and loved, General Election edition

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7602/16968072117_24b81efb7e.jpg

ilx is not talking about the UK election much - don't know why.

resigned to our tedium

serious answer: what happens after the election is more interesting and there are many better things to think about now. everything is playing out for now as a two year-old might predict

Nothing much to say about the garbage that's on offer tbh.

Miliband saying, "Debate me", when he means, "Debate with me", well, it's the end of the world, innit?

Come on now. You'll all be glued to it soon enough. This is just a phase you're going through.

Ooh, shall I vote Green or TUSC in my safe Labour seat! What choice, and what a difference I shall make!

Actually, our UKIP candidate is an ex-soldier called Ryan Acty - so Real England it's almost persuasive

Green probably.

No results found for "historical ryan actyment"

Natalie Bennett wasn't great again last night and I say that as someone who has voted Green since forever

Shall I vote Green and have my vote put instantly in the bin in my marginal-ish Tory/LD seat, shall I hold my nose very hard and vote LD as the only hope of dislodging the Tories locally, or shall I assume that no other bastard is voting LD ever again (though there are a few yellow posters up locally) and therefore there is no chance of anyone other than the Tories winning the seat

whee

If I was considering tactical voting I think I would need to vote Tory to mitigate the risk of UKIPerry (which I don't think is a real threat, but is the only one).

Greens easily winning the battle of the posters in my part of Brighton. Definitely seems to be the slightly posher properties that have Labour ones up. Have only spotted one Tory yet, sincerely hoping Clarence Mitchell (yeah that guy) gets handed a savage beating by the electorate

man needs a harsh takedown from that daily mail sub-ed

https://twitter.com/mitch_1uk/status/587760044852273152

oh my local hustings is tonight

perhaps I ought to go but spending a lovely warm spring Friday evening in a church hall listening to politicians... not quite as attractive as the pub garden I had otherwise planned

our local Green candidate is a former lecturer of Russian studies at Manchester University who now sets cryptic crosswords for the Guardian and FT, which seems pretty cool, I'll probably still vote Labour though

she also has a Ronald Searle drawing as her twitter picture which is kind of making me want to reconsider but seems like too shallow a reason to vote for someone

Mine is a safe Labour seat and our local MP is largely reasonable if not exactly distinctive. Have serious issues with Labour over welfare policy right now and I don't particularly want to be complicit in any form of continuing austerity, but I haven't looked into Green policies enough for it to be anything but a soft-headed protest vote. There's a couple of standard issue Trot guys as well but looking under that particular rock usually reveals something horrific so fuck that.

^^ similar situation. Am probably going for the soft-headed protest vote option though.

Corbyn is my MP, don't see why I shouldn't vote for him tbh.

Corbyn is great. Was proud to vote for him when I lived in that neck of the woods.

Lammy is ours now, but I can't bring myself to vote anything other than Labour this year.

i'm in a tory/labour marginal now so have been psyching myself up to hold my nose and vote for the ex-investment banker labour are fielding (admittedly he has made housing a priority and seems willing to actually talk about inequality)

back in 1922 battersea elected one of the uk's only communist mps/the third ever ethnic minority mp!

Green is the only choice for me in my area, realistically.

Natalie Bennett has been terrible in interviews and under pressure and not particularly great in the debates compared with others, but no one voting Green is doing so in the serious expectation that she will be PM so I don't see why it particularly matters. Otherwise there's no real social democratic option that doesn't have an overt nationalist agenda and that fragmentation is both frustrating and depressing.

If I was in any kind of marginal Labour seat I would vote for them, but I'm pretty happy not to have to worry about holding my nose (especially as the nearest challengers in this seat last time were the LibDems).

I'm in a normally safe Labour seat, one of the few where they increased their majority in 2010, but I think it's possibly winnable for the SNP, though it would take a huge swing.

We also have a candidate for the "Cannabis is safer than alcohol" party.

not sure if he inhales
http://cista.org//static/media/candidate/Craig.jpg

he's got the same eyes as vin diesel in pitch black

think that guy will be starring in sticky black

http://media.giphy.com/media/10xZU9b7JBx14s/giphy.gif

the whole thing is a total farce - can't get motivated about it in any way. apart from fear of tories getting back in.

fun 'create your majority' game on BBC albeit currently broken
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32336071

appropriately enough

i am voting Yorkhire First because this whole shit is a mug's game

^

Croydon First

Started looking at the SNP manifesto, since it seems to be a national document these days and the first glaring fiscal error jumps out at the top of only the third real page of text:

Scrapping the Bedroom Tax
We will vote for the immediate abolition of the unfair
Bedroom Tax. Abolishing the Bedroom Tax would mean
that the £35 million a year that the Scottish Government
is spending to compensate those affected by it would be
available to spend on other priorities. We would invest that
money in measures to tackle - and eventually eradicate -
food poverty.

A+ for sentiment. But if it costs you £35M to rule out the effects of a tax then that tax raises £35M. So if you cancel the tax you raise £35M less in taxes (particularly if you want full fiscal autonomy because then they're directly your taxes) which is neatly cancelled out by the £35M you save in not compensating people for being taxed under it. So whether it exists or not, the money to invest in the final sentence just doesn't exist.

That's a pretty fundamental error of double accounting.

scottish govt pays the bedroom tax for ppl out of its own pocket iirc

But do the funds raised by bedroom tax in Scotland go to the Scottish government, or do they go to Westminster at present? If the latter, then it makes sense. xp

The £35m benefits saving from the Bedroom Tax goes to Westminster. The Scottish government spends £35m to offset this, and would be £35m better off if the tax was scrapped.

Similarly, when the government in effect put an end to the bedroom tax last year, that £35m had to be found from somewhere and accounted for (Scotsman article) rather than just paid for by the savings from BT.

If you're saying that a £35m plus is cancelled out by a £35 minus elsewhere, that's just how money works.

£35m-£35 = £0 is not how money works.

35m they had to scrape together from down the back of the budgetary couch