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[Eiji]

Vote Labour if you want hyperinflation/sterling destruction all for the sake of high house prices.

 

[JonnyBrad]

So - last PMQ's today.

 

[killer_clank]

Brown and Clegg are gonna have to kill Cameron today at PMQ's. Not gonna happen though, Brown is useless at PMQ's, all he ever does is mumble and go "M, M, M, Mr, Mr. Speaker".

 

[J Tourettes]

The DE Bill scares the hell out of me... but being in the UK i guess we're used to the removal of basic rights so hey :/

If the DE bill goes through, we'll be heading down the same shit that Australia and China are heading.

Sad thing is, barely anyone knows what it is and what it represents, if they did, they wouldn't be so apathetic about it. But atleast people are fighting against it, which is something i guess.

http://debillitated.heroku.com/

Interesting link to see who was in attendance and their stance on the debill. I'm cancelling my union membership over this shite.

 

[blazinglord]

Brown and Clegg are gonna have to kill Cameron today at PMQ's. Not gonna happen though, Brown is useless at PMQ's, all he ever does is mumble and go "M, M, M, Mr, Mr. Speaker".

It's Prime Minister's Questions, not Leader of the Opposition's Questions. The whole point of the exercise is to hold the government to account. Brown's consistent refusal to directly answer the questions put to him reflects badly only on him.

 

[Chinner]

Brown and Clegg are gonna have to kill Cameron today at PMQ's. Not gonna happen though, Brown is useless at PMQ's, all he ever does is mumble and go "M, M, M, Mr, Mr. Speaker".

No, Brown can be quite capable actually. As for him dodging questions, well, you guys haven't been watching PMQS long have you? ALL governments do this.

PMQ starting now.

 

[industrian]

One thing that's kind of good about being 8 hours ahead of GMT: I can watch the election results unfold without going to work like a zombie the next day.

 

[iapetus]

Well, the BBC live text coverage gives the impression of Brown being very much on the back foot...

 

[Chinner]

Brown whipped Cameron, who comes across as shallow, populist and offering no substance. Clegg did a good job though.

 

[Omikaru]

Cameron just dished the usual: helicopters, pension funds, national insurance rise. Brown responded with diversionary tactics and the usual spiel: Ashcroft, Tory cuts to NHS and schools, Global consensus on the recovery.

Clegg attacked both parties on stifling electoral reform, and Brown basically tried to limit the damage by saying Labour supported some cherry picked electoral reforms. It won't wash.

MPs are such a pack of babies. Shouting down eachother (moreso than usual), screaming "HE, HE, HE!" at Clegg when he attacked both parties. These are the monkeys who run our country.

 

[JonathanEx]

And then them all shouting BYE BYE as it ended. Bloody children.

 

[defel]

I enjoy PMQs. Despite the rhetoric and question-dodging they get passionate, they speak face-to-face, tell eachother what they think. PMQs would never influence who I vote for but Im glad that its happens.

 

[industrian]

I miss the good ol' PMQ with Blair and Hague. That stuff was comedy gold.

 

[brain_stew]

Well if we get a hung parliament and Lib Dems get involved you can be pretty sure some sort of voting reform will be offered to them in exchange for "power". Some form of proportional representation will be put into effect for future elections and the Lib Dems will just grow and grow in influence from that point.

Its about the only good thing that could come out of this election.

Please don't vote in a Tory government. I'm already shitting my pants at the prospect of having super toff Cameron running the country. Yes, it can get worse people, much, much worse.

 

[worldrunover]

I'm American, so I don't really know how this works: how is an election day just "announced"? Who announces it? How often do you need to have one? Did you know it was coming this year or was it a complete surprise? This could never work in American politics.

 

[industrian]

I'm American, so I don't really know how this works: how is an election day just "announced"? Who announces it? How often do you need to have one? Did you know it was coming this year or was it a complete surprise? This could never work in American politics.

Technically the Prime Minister can call for a general election at any time. But usually it's every five years. And we've known that this election was coming this summer since 2005 - but the date isn't revealed until the Queen dissolves parliament.

http://www.parliament.uk/faq/elections_faq_page.cfm

 

[Omikaru]

The only way the British public can "win" the election, as opposed to vested interests, is to force a hung parliament. That will hopefully lead to electoral reform, and for me that's an ideal result.

 

[Souldriver]

I'm American, so I don't really know how this works: how is an election day just "announced"? Who announces it? How often do you need to have one? Did you know it was coming this year or was it a complete surprise? This could never work in American politics.

Isn't it just that the elections have to happen within a certain time span, but they look for the best possible day (calculation vacations, special events, ...). The government can't stretch their ruling until forever, cause they are basically just allowed to deal with "already ongoing issues"?


I think it's like that in my country.

 

[Omikaru]

I'm American, so I don't really know how this works: how is an election day just "announced"? Who announces it? How often do you need to have one? Did you know it was coming this year or was it a complete surprise? This could never work in American politics.

Traditionally elections are held every four years, but a Parliamentary term can be five. Basically, the Prime Minister can pick the date of the next election and then he asks the Queen to dissolve parliament.

The last election, however, was 2005, because Brown bottled it. It should've been last year. Now he's run out of time and has to call it.

 

[Chinner]

Got some links for you:
Tabloid Watch
Enemies of Reason
Daily Mail Watch

 

[jas0nuk]

Not sure how you can say Brown whipped Cameron... as usual he obfuscated, used tractor statistics, kept bleating on about Lord Ashcroft and "Same old Tories".

Labour are wrong on the NI increase and simply cannot accept it. Brown thinks that the leaders of the private sector who generate wealth in this country have been deceived. That's rich coming from a man whose yearly budgets were full to the brim with stealth taxes.

5 more years of this fool? No thanks.

 

[J Tourettes]

Grauniad piece on where the DEB is at the mo: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/mar/22/digital-economy-bill

 

[Ushojax]

Not sure how you can say Brown whipped Cameron... as usual he obfuscated, used tractor statistics, kept bleating on about Lord Ashcroft and "Same old Tories".

Labour are wrong on the NI increase and simply cannot accept it. Brown thinks that the leaders of the private sector who generate wealth in this country have been deceived. That's rich coming from a man whose yearly budgets were full to the brim with stealth taxes.

5 more years of this fool? No thanks.

Quite. He doesn't even factor PFI schemes into his national debt calculations, and he has the nerve to bang on about deception?

 

[Dabookerman]

Grauniad piece on where the DEB is at the mo: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/mar/22/digital-economy-bill

They better sort out the Tax Break for the Games Industry as that directly affects me >:X So far, Lib Dems and Labour are the only ones who have said they will offer it.

 

[Empty]

Grauniad piece on where the DEB is at the mo: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/mar/22/digital-economy-bill

horrible.

 

[jas0nuk]

That article is from before the Budget. The tax break for video game industry was in the Budget.

As for the current state of the DE Bill, http://www.out-law.com/page-10898

 

[Walshicus]

Not sure how you can say Brown whipped Cameron... as usual he obfuscated, used tractor statistics, kept bleating on about Lord Ashcroft and "Same old Tories".

Labour are wrong on the NI increase and simply cannot accept it. Brown thinks that the leaders of the private sector who generate wealth in this country have been deceived. That's rich coming from a man whose yearly budgets were full to the brim with stealth taxes.

5 more years of this fool? No thanks.

I agree with jas0nuk - anything but a return to Tory government!

 

[J Tourettes]

That article is from before the Budget. The tax break for video game industry was in the Budget.

As for the current state of the DE Bill, http://www.out-law.com/page-10898

Yeah, sorry my mistake I didn't notice the date.

 

[jas0nuk]

I agree with jas0nuk - anything but a return to Tory government!

Your answer says a lot.

Can you justify both 1) the national insurance increase which will cost 57,000 jobs (http://www.fsb.org.uk/News.aspx?loc=general&rec=5682) and 2) NOT cutting £11 billion of government waste until next year?

Cutting waste and taxes and letting people spend the money themselves is better than letting the government waste it, unless you're in Gordon Brown world, where government waste is actually "investment for the future".

68 business leaders now back the Conservative policy. Some of them are on the Prime Minister's own business advisory council. Labour and the Lib Dems are on the wrong side of this argument.

 

[arena08]

They better sort out the Tax Break for the Games Industry as that directly affects me >:X So far, Lib Dems and Labour are the only ones who have said they will offer it.

I've been following this closely too. I've been writing my dissertation on this area and from what I can tell there is support from all of the parties. Lib dems actually seem the strongest opposition.

http://www.develop-online.net/news/34341/Tories-come-clean-Well-offer-tax-cuts-in-first-budget
http://www.develop-online.net/news/34344/Key-parties-lock-horns-at-ELSPA-Question-Time

 

[cntr]

Can't anything be done about the DE bill?

 

[cntr]

I'm American, so I don't really know how this works: how is an election day just "announced"? Who announces it? How often do you need to have one? Did you know it was coming this year or was it a complete surprise? This could never work in American politics.

Prime Minister requests the Queen to dissolve Parliament and call elections. Technically, the Queen does this, but it's de facto power of the Prime Minister. Elections traditionally happen about every 5 years.

Edit: Though Labour and the LibDems seem to want fixed elections and terms, according to the articles I'm reading.

 

[Dabookerman]

Time to throw away your copies of End of Evangelion people.
UK Virtual Child Porn Ban in effect

Reckon this is thread worthy?

 

[SmokyDave]

Time to throw away your copies of End of Evangelion people.
UK Virtual Child Porn Ban in effect

Reckon this is thread worthy?

Fucking ridiculous. I'm not a big fan of Anime and I'm certainly no fan of erotic Simpsons fanfics but this ban is flat out stupid.

 

[Walshicus]

Your answer says a lot.

Can you justify both 1) the national insurance increase which will cost 57,000 jobs (http://www.fsb.org.uk/News.aspx?loc=general&rec=5682) and 2) NOT cutting £11 billion of government waste until next year?

I doubt that 57k figure is accurate. It's a number contrived to serve a political purpose by a lobby group whose agenda - unsurprisingly - is to increase its profit. Small businesses will start to hire regardless because the market conditions support it. My team in a fairly well known English corporation has grown 20% in the last month - and while I don't presume we're indicative of the entire economy, I know for a fact that our industry has started hiring again and no minor NI increase is going to perturb that. And besides, I'm sure even the most junior of my fellow economists out there could build an economic model that churns a net employment gain out of an NI increase with associated government spend.

£11bn of waste? I'm old enough to avoid the naïve notion that even a quarter of that can be truly clawed back - if indeed it truly is waste - and firmly believe that if it were easy to cut it would have been done already.

 

[ConfusingJazz]

How did the press miss this glorious opportunity: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/04/theyre-off-ctd.html

 

[travisbickle]

Your answer says a lot.

Can you justify both 1) the national insurance increase which will cost 57,000 jobs (http://www.fsb.org.uk/News.aspx?loc=general&rec=5682) and 2) NOT cutting £11 billion of government waste until next year?

Cutting waste and taxes and letting people spend the money themselves is better than letting the government waste it, unless you're in Gordon Brown world, where government waste is actually "investment for the future".

68 business leaders now back the Conservative policy. Some of them are on the Prime Minister's own business advisory council. Labour and the Lib Dems are on the wrong side of this argument.

Oh shit!!

 

[cntr]

Time to throw away your copies of End of Evangelion people.
UK Virtual Child Porn Ban in effect

Reckon this is thread worthy?

That is not the reasoning behind banning child porn. :\

 

[iapetus]

I have just had a sneak preview of some of the online questions the prime minister is going to be asked at an event called the Peoples' PMQs. So long as his memory is tip-top, he shouldn't find them too challenging. They include "will you reduce the voting age to 16" and "how will you reform the House of Lords" - two policies he announced earlier this afternoon in a major speech. Surely mere coincidence!

Yeah, that's quite some coincidence and not a set-up whatsoever.

 

[jas0nuk]

Sir Fragula: This figure comes from the government's own advisors, Gershon and Read, who the government ignored. I would speculate that they did not like what they heard (cutting the NHS IT projects, ID cards) and that some of it is politically unpopular (cutting child tax credits for households with incomes over £50,000, increasing the pension age to 66)

Darling admits that the increase will cost jobs:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/30/alistair-darling-budget-mps-treasury-select-committee

10.23am: All of a sudden, Darling's on the ropes and being pummelled by Michael Fallon, the ever-impressive deputy chair of the committee (and Conservative MP for Sevenoaks). Fallon asks how many jobs will be lost because of the chancellor's plan to raise national insurance rates.

Darling assures the committee that the Treasury took the impact of the NI changes on employment into account. "So, what is it?", inquires Fallon. "It's built into the forecasts," straight-bats the chancellor. Excellent, responds Fallon, but what?

Like a pro, Darling follows the line that if you're in trouble you turn to your civil service advisors. Dave Ramsden (chief economic advisor) directs everyone's attention to Box C2, on page 198 of the Red Book.

Fallon won't be shaken off. Said box doesn't include a specific forecast for the impact of the NI rise. "You're being evasive," he challenges Darling. Not at all, the chancellor replies. There's a "manageable impact."

travisbickle: So you approve of the excessive bureaucracy in this country? xD

--

From the Electoral Commission - information as to which seats are counting on the night

Latest numbers, updated today:
http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/83585/UKPGE-count-timing-data.pdf

Election night = 520
Next day = 59
Undecided = 69
No information = 2

--

Opinion polls this evening
Angus Reid for Politicalbetting
CON 37%
LAB 26%
LD 22%
Conservative majority mid 40s

Populus for The Times
CON 39.3%
LAB 31.6%
LD 20.8%
OTH 8.3%
Conservative majority 30ish

YouGov for The Sun
CON 37%
LAB 32%
LD 19%
Hung parliament

 

[Wes]

Would appear Brown got heckled today over schools and parents not being able to get their children into the schools they want. Might appear as a sidestory in the main report in this evening's news.

 

[J Tourettes]

Would appear Brown got heckled today over schools and parents not being able to get their children into the schools they want. Might appear as a sidestory in the main report in this evening's news.

yeah, been on twice already.

 

[FabCam]

The only way the British public can "win" the election, as opposed to vested interests, is to force a hung parliament. That will hopefully lead to electoral reform, and for me that's an ideal result.

Good God that would be one of the worst possible results- almost as bad a Labour remaining in power. A hung parliament would lead to more bitching and background politics which would do huge damage to the economy and public confidence.

 

[Walshicus]

"The UK economy is forecast to outstrip its G7 peers in the second quarter of this year, says the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The OECD predicted the UK would grow at an annualised rate of 3.1% in the second quarter of 2010.

Such a rate would put the UK ahead of the US, Japan, Germany, France and Italy - but not Canada.

The British Chambers of Commerce also said the UK had avoided a double-dip recession in the first quarter of 2010.

However, the BCC warned that the UK's recovery was weak and there remained a risks of setbacks in the future."

Aren't you glad the Tories weren't in power during the recession?

EDIT:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8598689.stm - UK manufacturing at 15 year growth high.

 

[jas0nuk]

Sir Fragula: Nope. Brown put the UK economy in the worst possible condition to weather the recession.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/article-1263537/IMF-warns-UK-growth-lower-expected.html

In its January report, the IMF had predicted that UK GDP would rise by 1.3 per cent in 2010 and 2.7 per cent in 2011.
It now expects 1.3 per cent this year and 2.5 per cent next year.
Chancellor Alistair Darling expects 3 per cent to 3.5 per cent for the 2011/12 fiscal year, well ahead of many independent forecasts.

It isn't at a 15 year high, the rate of growth was its highest for 15 years. Manufacturing has fallen since 1997.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...decline-Labour-greater-Margaret-Thatcher.html

Manufacturing accounted for more than 20 per cent of the economy in 1997, the year Labour came to power. But by 2007, that share had declined to 12.4 per cent.
That is far steeper than the fall under Lady Thatcher, when its share of the economy fell from 25.8 per cent to 22.5 per cent.

 

[FabCam]

Aren't you glad the Tories weren't in power during the recession?

EDIT:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8598689.stm - UK manufacturing at 15 year growth high.

There wouldn't have been such a massive recession if Brown wasn't treasurer...

 

[J Tourettes]

Good God that would be one of the worst possible results- almost as bad a Labour remaining in power. A hung parliament would lead to more bitching and background politics which would do huge damage to the economy and public confidence.

If a hung parliament brings PR a step closer, I'm all for it.

 

[Walshicus]

There wouldn't have been such a massive recession if Brown wasn't treasurer...

:lol
Yeah, he was somewhat influential but I don't think he was responsible for the global economic downturn. And the subtext I'm reading here is that somehow a Tory chancellor from 1997 onward would have put in place policies to contain the CoL and the banking sector. That too is laughable considering Tory essence is to facilitate business interests above all else.

 

[curls]

Good God that would be one of the worst possible results- almost as bad a Labour remaining in power. A hung parliament would lead to more bitching and background politics which would do huge damage to the economy and public confidence.

What? and put up with the broken two party system we have had in place for 65 years.

 

[jas0nuk]

4 reasons why Gordon Brown made the recession worse

1) He presided over an explosion of state borrowing (we had a large budget deficit from 2001 onwards)

2) He moved bank regulation from the Bank of England to a quango, the Financial Services Authority, which Tory MP Peter Lilley said was dangerous at the time.

3) He changed the measure of inflation causing the Bank of England to set interest rates lower than they should have been.

Brown discarded the traditional Retail Price Index for a new one, the Consumer Price Index. This had the political advantage of producing a lower number, so that inflation would look less high under his watch. But it ignores housing costs, which are important in Britain. The result was that while house prices were soaring - UK house prices doubled in the five years before the 2008 crash, a far steeper raise than in France, germany and our oher near neighbours - the Bank was focused on other things, so its policy did not sufficiently rein back on borrowing.

4) His withdrawal of the Dividend Tax Credit on pension funds destabilized everything, meaning that high risk was necessary to make the returns needed to pay the pensions meaning that banks were required to take higher risks.

Brown likes to go on about how it is a "global recession that started in America" caused by the sub-prime crisis, but remember he said that he had "ended boom and bust". In fact he put the UK in such a terrible position that we were the last major economy out of recession.