Lib Dems fall behind UKIP

[Andy Zarse]

oyster said:

You were using figures up to 2010, before this government was even in power.

Look at this one for 2010-2015:
Forecast spending as a percentage of GDP 2010-15

These figures are crap. Have you seen the GDP growth assumptions etc that they rely on? There's more chance of Ben Hurr walking into Aldi than these being met.

[turbobloke]

Andy Zarse said:

turbobloke said:

There are vast tracts of northern enclaves with that voting pattern.

They need to explain it, not others.

And there are vast tracts where the registered voters can't be asked for an explanation on the simple premise that they don't exist.

It occurred to me to mention Labour postal votes.

[eharding]

0a said:

If they fail to address issues like Europe and spending and behave like a Labour government, let’s just have a Labour government.

If you want a Labour government, why don't you just vote Labour?

Attempting the tired old "I can't tell the difference between them so it doesn't matter" clap-trap would simply reveal a woeful political myopia on your part though.

[martin84]

0a said:

Derek whether we think they lost or not isn't relevant here. From their point of view they entered an election and walked away the dominant coalition partner and with all the significant ministerial positions.

The problem is the Lib Dems will be decimated in 2015 and the Tories have done nothing to suggest they can win a majority. What are they going to do if its a tight Con-Lab race, neither win but theres no clear 3rd party which could give either a majority?

0a said:

At the end of the day they turn up to parliament like election winners and get paid ministerial salaries like election winners.

And are acting like election winners which is angering the public because we didn't vote for this Government.

0a said:

UKIP votes will soon translate back into Conservative votes should sensible Conservative policies be enacted.

Perhaps but thats not enough for the Tories. The public don't like Tory policies as evident by the fact the Tories didn't win the last election. The Tories would win back UKIP votes but thats not enough, they need Labour swing voters.

turbobloke said:

They need to explain it, not others.

Put simply they dont like Tories Posh stuck up 'hooray henrys' as my father calls them. They view the Tories are purely for rich people and nobody else and my parents are not rich so they dont vote for them. Quite straight forward really.

[Milky Joe]

Elroy Blue said:

Previously my 'X' has gone straight into the Tory box.

Cameron, son of Blair, is such a total disappointment. The stories I've heard about his contempt for his protection Officers, his complete lack of reality about how normal people live has turned me off the party for good. It will take someone exceptional to make me vote for them again.

What is doubly depressing is that there is just no one else I see who represents me and my views. Labour or Lib Dems...don't make me laugh.

I'm voting UKIP to give my local Tory robot MP a kick in the teeth. I don't care about 'protest' votes. I'm simply not going to vote for someone who has failed.

[Trommel]

martin84 said:

and my parents are not rich so they dont vote for them

Are they thick as well as poor?

[wollowizard]

3 years is a very long time in politics and predicting the end of the lib dems is a bit premature. 2015 Will be interesting though.

[martin84]

Trommel said:

Are they thick as well as poor?

Care to get off your keyboard warrior high horse and say that to my face?

[Trommel]

martin84 said:

Care to get off your keyboard warrior high horse and say that to my face?

Simple question, are they blinkered due to ignorance or stupidity? Otherwise they would surely vote for the policies they preferred rather than the colour of the rosette.

[ewenm]

martin84 said:

Posh stuck up 'hooray henrys' as my father calls them. They view the Tories are purely for rich people and nobody else and my parents are not rich so they dont vote for them. Quite straight forward really.

Hence we get the government we deserve. If people vote based on prejudices rather than on policies, why would anyone expect to have a functioning useful government?

[Marf]

martin84 said:

Care to get off your keyboard warrior high horse and say that to my face?

[Digga]

martin84 said:

Put simply they dont like Tories Posh stuck up 'hooray henrys' as my father calls them. They view the Tories are purely for rich people and nobody else and my parents are not rich so they dont vote for them. Quite straight forward really.

An over-simplistic but popular point of view. It sadly neglects the fact that the vast majority of SMEs - the largest private sector employers - tend to far much better when labour are not trying - deliberately or unintentionally - to kill them.

Working men and women are employed by businesses that Labour tends to suffocate.

That said, the current lot of 'posh twits' seem barely more suitable custodians for the private economy...

[eharding]

martin84 said:

Trommel said:

Are they thick as well as poor?

Care to get off your keyboard warrior high horse and say that to my face?

What are you going to do - get your Dad to thump him?

[martin84]

ewenm said:

Hence we get the government we deserve. If people vote based on prejudices rather than on policies, why would anyone expect to have a functioning useful government?

Its not like the Conservative's have done much to dispell such prejudices though is it? They are mostly Oxbridge rich kids who've never worked a day in their lives, the party is mostly funded by a select group of wealthy individuals and they have cut taxes for the top earners. All of this is fact, its not made up. The stereotypical image of a Conservative is of a posh stuck up Eton boy who wears tweed and goes shooting at a friends manor house on the weekends, unfortunately the stereotype is not entirely unfounded.

Lets stop pretending the stereotypical image of the Tories is entirely made up left-wing propaganda because the fact is the Tories don't help themselves dispell the image.

Trommel said:

Simple question, are they blinkered due to ignorance or stupidity? Otherwise they would surely vote for the policies they preferred rather than the colour of the rosette.

They're not particularly political people. With that said why do you assume anybody who isnt ignorant would vote Conservative? A few pages back it was noted the Tory and Labour manifesto's were 96% identical in 2010 so aren't they both essentially the same party?

I should ignore your disgusting remarks about my parents, given the fact PH treats pensioners with the same contempt as benefit sucking asylum seekers and would happily throw their own Gran out of her home just to raise Osborne a few quid.

[oyster]

martin84 said:

oyster said:

I think you also have to add the Labour gerrymandered constituency boundaries and their army of paid voters (the underclass and the non-job public sector) to the list of causes for Cameron not winning an outright majority.

I'm not sure I buy that, its a popular theory on PH but with very little substance to back it up. Essentially you're saying Cameron didn't win an outright majority because millions of UK citizens didn't vote for his party which is sort of how a democracy works.

Err no, I'm saying the opposite.
In 2005 the Tories got more votes than Labour in England, but Labour won more seats. And this was evident in 2010 too. And it's not just down to Labour being good in marginals.
Many of the urban seats in Labour heartlands have about 60,000 voters in them, whilst southern rural seats in the Tory heartlands have 80,000+ registered voters. That is simply unfair.

martin84 said:

You're a bit more accurate with the public sector I suppose but is that surprising? The Tories are not friends of the public sector, this is well documented and the NHS is the UK's biggest employer with over 1.4 million people. People are afraid for their jobs at the moment and most people employed in the public sector observing the balance sheet in 2010 would've read Labour - keep job, Conservatives - redundancy.

Its almost amazing people don't vote for becoming unemployed

That's very true but what's important to remember is that Labour swelled that section of society by over 1 million people from 1997 to 2010. As you say they will temd to vote Labour, so that's the best part of a million extra votes Labour bought.

[turbobloke]

martin84 said:

They view the Tories are purely for rich people and nobody else and my parents are not rich so they dont vote for them. Quite straight forward really.

As their preferred Party during its last 13 year long national trainwreck managed to increase almost every measure of poverty known to Polly Toynbee while benefiting the one percent highest earners in the land, presumably you've explained to them that they're so very wide of the mark?

Basically it's a tribal thing, is it not? There's no basis for considering Labour to be the Party of the working man or woman these days. They are the Party of abject incompetence, destruction of living standards due to inventing bust-and-bust, and of national bankruptcy.

[0a]

eharding said:

If you want a Labour government, why don't you just vote Labour?

Attempting the tired old "I can't tell the difference between them so it doesn't matter" clap-trap would simply reveal a woeful political myopia on your part though.

Hmm.

I did not say 'I can't tell the difference'. On several issues that I consider to be important the benefit of a Tory government over a Labour one is so small that I now consider it more beneficial to place my vote elsewhere to register this fact. Did I say I wanted a Labour government? No. Ignorant? No - a result of looking at the spending data, talking to many small businesses who see no difference, talking to local government staff and teachers, and a study of the UK's relationship with the EU which has not changed at all.

Edited by 0a on Wednesday 18th April 17:01

[wollowizard]

ewenm said:

martin84 said:

Posh stuck up 'hooray henrys' as my father calls them. They view the Tories are purely for rich people and nobody else and my parents are not rich so they dont vote for them. Quite straight forward really.

Hence we get the government we deserve. If people vote based on prejudices rather than on policies, why would anyone expect to have a functioning useful government?

I wonder how many people vote based on what they have read in a manifesto? It is a strange world we live in where politicians can do as they please due to the total ignorance of the electorate.

I read the 2010 Labour manifesto and if you took the stuff that identifies Labour off it and asked Labour voters to read it, I think they would swear it was conservative. It would probably work the other way around with the conservative manifesto too.

[ewenm]

martin84 said:

ewenm said:

Hence we get the government we deserve. If people vote based on prejudices rather than on policies, why would anyone expect to have a functioning useful government?

Its not like the Conservative's have done much to dispell such prejudices though is it? They are mostly Oxbridge rich kids who've never worked a day in their lives, the party is mostly funded by a select group of wealthy individuals and they have cut taxes for the top earners. All of this is fact, its not made up. The stereotypical image of a Conservative is of a posh stuck up Eton boy who wears tweed and goes shooting at a friends manor house on the weekends, unfortunately the stereotype is not entirely unfounded.

Lets stop pretending the stereotypical image of the Tories is entirely made up left-wing propaganda because the fact is the Tories don't help themselves dispell the image.

I'm not disputing that. The only point in that which is relevant to running the country is the bit about "never worked a day in their lives" - which is shared across most MPs of all parties.

I find it interesting that on one hand people are proud of having 2 of the top universities in the world here in the UK, but then disparaging about Oxbridge graduates going on to be leaders (political, corporate, etc).

Being dispassionate about it, I'd like our political leaders to have been educated at the best possible institutions. I'd also like them to have worked in the real world for a bit before becoming politicians. Currently we have the education but not the experience (again, widely true across Libdems and Labour as well as the Conservatives too).

Off topic: I wish we could proudly celebrate excellence in this country rather than celebrating mediocrity. Poverty of aspiration. Don't do your best, don't stand out from the crowd, don't chase achievement. So sad.

[Trommel]

martin84 said:

I should ignore your disgusting remarks about my parents, given the fact PH treats pensioners with the same contempt as benefit sucking asylum seekers and would happily throw their own Gran out of her home just to raise Osborne a few quid.

You said they didn't have much money and hated "the Tories", I asked whether their political bigotry was down to ignorance or stupidity. Not sure how I've insulted them or indeed any other pensioners.