UK General Election 2015 | Conservatives win with an overall majority

[Jippy]

http://www.theguardian.com/business...ve-30bn-black-hole-in-spending-plans-says-ifs

Once the NHS promise and tax cuts are factored in, cuts of up to 30% (!) would be required from all non-protected budgets. I think its fair to say that's impossible, which rather begs the question of which current promises would go out of the window.

It also says that Labour would require less cuts, but they're vaguer about how much they'd want to borrow, with a potential extra £90Bn borrowed over the course of 5 years compared to the Tories.

Probably ammo there for both parties' campaigns, even if the left-leaning paper highlights the Tories problems over Labour's.

Defo ammo for both parties who are repeatedly regurgitating anything the IFS says.

'Labour will heap £90bn more debt on UK and increase taxes by £12bn'

Election 2015: Institute for Fiscal Studies says only a Conservative government would balance the books after the Election.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/gen...66/Ukip-call-St-Georges-Day-bank-holiday.html

 

[Shamwow]

Decent tool: http://election.awedience.com/

Compare how the candidates in your constituency are using twitter. Can see which words come up the most, i.e. if they're mostly just using empty platitudes, or what sort of discussions they're having. Enjoyed seeing that the Labour candidate in my area's most used words were things like 'Walthamstow' (constituency), 'Women' and 'Campaign', compared to the Conservative candidate's top words of 'Labour', 'Ed' and 'Miliband'.

UKIP is having a bit of a twitter spat with Creasy today. Fun times.

 

[bishblaize]

Defo ammo for both parties who are repeatedly regurgitating anything the IFS says.

'Labour will heap £90bn more debt on UK and increase taxes by £12bn'

Election 2015: Institute for Fiscal Studies says only a Conservative government would balance the books after the Election.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/gen...66/Ukip-call-St-Georges-Day-bank-holiday.html

Hehe, funny stuff.

I went to the daily fail website to see whether they were screaming blue murder about borrowing, and was rather surprise to find that a) they seem very unarsed by the whole election judging from the lack of coverage and b) their article was surprisingly balanced, pointing out all the major parties had flaws and not giving any more focus on one party than another.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...election-IFS-warns-two-weeks-polling-day.html

Well I never.

 

[peterstorey]

I can unde rstand why London would be an impractical place to raise a family. I just don't think it'd be a bad, or unsuitable one, providing you could. I'm aware I can only speak from my experience of being an annoying child here, rather than having to actually deal with one.

It's fine for bringing up kids, lots to do, lots of green space, good transport.

 

[ThierryHenry]

UKIP is having a bit of a twitter spat with Creasy today. Fun times.

I read the whole chain, unbelievable. Reckless comes across as such a snivelling tosser.

Also on the Stella front:

Hoping we can get a good reply from Molly to that.

And:

Is she wearing a pinstripe Spiderman blazer in this pic? I think I love her.

 

[Grinner]

Would she rent me a room?

I actually live in Leytonstone already, like the area and have to move out of my house in September.

Maybe. Are you a good tenant?

 

[rotherham_red]

That's a shame about your health because my mum would rent you a room in Leytonstone. That's just the right distance from the City and not a bad place to live at all.

Thanks for the offer Grinner, the process of getting this flat sorted has been absolute nightmare but I can finally see some rays of light on the horizon

South Woodford's lovely mate, good choice. Make sure you check out the Ho-Ho when you move in - London's best Chinese outside of Chinatown. Only downsides are your reliance on the central line, and that your mp's a cnut.

And aagreed on your second para, it's just not the same.

Will do, as long as it's halal (which it probably is - it's East London after all )

Pfft, just wait 'till Deon gets in.

Lol, they do try bless em

South of the river yeah generally not great but South West London is lovely. By South West I do of course mean SW postcodes not south of the river

I lived in SW6 for many years before moving outside London and it was pretty much great. All the posh birds you could handle as well as loads and loads of Americans

Lived for a couple of years in St John's Wood as well and that was good too. Generally West London I would say is decent with good and bad bits while east has become quite bad in the past 10 years or so.

For me as a northerner, East London just seems a little more like home than West London (not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing to be honest with you ). West while generally being more affluent just doesn't sit well with me.
I need to see more of SW, some of the properties there seemed nice while I was on my flat hunt.

 

[Shamwow]

Maybe. Are you a good tenant?

Never missed a rent payment in my life and I've been told that my aura brings good luck so to answer your question, yes.

 

[Mockney]

What are people referring to when bigging up SW exactly? The SW postcode can apply to Chelsea or Brixton.

 

[ThierryHenry]

What are people referring to when bigging up SW exactly? The SW postcode can apply to Chelsea or Brixton.

Brixton's South London, Chelsea, Richmond, Kingston are South West.

 

[Grinner]

Never missed a rent payment in my life and I've been told that my aura brings good luck so to answer your question, yes.

Well I'll send her a note and see if she's interested. PM some basic details that would answer her likely questions. It's a quiet room at the back of a large second floor flat in a nice victorian terrace street. Shared kitchen and bath, use of the garden. She generally rents to foreign students who don't come home rolling pissed or make lots of noise but I'm sure she'd be interested in a long-term deal too.

 

[Mockney]

Brixton's South London, Chelsea, Richmond, Kingston are South West.

feck that then, I'd prefer Brixton. But that's me.

 

[ThierryHenry]

feck that then, I'd prefer Brixton. But that's me.

Definitely.

 

[Shamwow]

Well I'll send her a note and see if she's interested. PM some basic details that would answer her likely questions. It's a quiet room at the back of a large second floor flat in a nice victorian terrace street. Shared kitchen and bath, use of the garden. She generally rents to foreign students who don't come home rolling pissed or make lots of noise but I'm sure she'd be interested in a long-term deal too.

Is it sharing with her? I am quite noisy to be quite honest.

 

[Grinner]

Is it sharing with her? I am quite noisy to be quite honest.

Yes. If you are young and living it up then you should probably find somewhere else.

 

[Shamwow]

Yes. If you are young and living it up then you should probably find somewhere else.

Okay thanks anyway. I think I will have a go at being a property guardian instead. One of my friends is living in a ridiculously nice flat, all open plan big rooms, free standing bath etc etc... £250 a month.

 

[LitterBug]

What are people referring to when bigging up SW exactly? The SW postcode can apply to Chelsea or Brixton.

I mentioned earlier SW not south of the river is Fulham, Chelsea, Kensington, SW 3,5,6,7,10.

 

[Jippy]

Brixton's South London, Chelsea, Richmond, Kingston are South West.

Brixton is SW2 or something and Richmond and Kingston are in Surrey to be pedantic.

@Mockney I work in Vauxhall. Are you counting 'the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens' in your four Lambeth parks?

 

[Mockney]

Brixton is SW2 or something and Richmond and Kingston are in Surrey to be pedantic.

@Mockney I work in Vauxhall. Are you counting 'the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens' in your four Lambeth parks?

Briccy's SW2 and SW9, 2 being the nicer, more suburban Brixton Hill bit. And yeah, I don't really consider Kingston to be London proper. Plus they never let me in to their Oceana. cnuts.

I wasn't actually, I was going off the top of my head really. Clapham Common, Streatham Common, Brockwell Park and Battersea Park (which is technically Wandsworth) are what sprung to mind. But there's also Norword, Ruskin and Kennington parks and Horniman Gardens (lol, Horny man) There's fecking parks all over the shop. You can't throw a rock without it landing in a bloody park.

Horniman and the Pleasure Gardens is a good name for a disco band fwiw.

 

[Shamwow]

Last time I went to my local park I thought I found a dead body but it was just a man sleeping in the bushes.

 

[Mockney]

Clapham Common has a monument that's been completely overtaken by tramps. It's basically their gathering point/hang out/pub/hostel. It's also in exactly the same spot the Ice Cream truck parks in the summer. Which makes for a lovely community atmosphere.

 

[Jippy]

Briccy's SW2 and SW9, 2 being the nicer, more suburban Brixton Hill bit. And yeah, I don't really consider Kingston to be London proper. Plus they never let me in to their Oceana. cnuts.

I wasn't actually, I was going off the top of my head really. Clapham Common, Streatham Common, Brockwell Park and Battersea Park (which is technically Wandsworth) are what sprung to mind. But there's also Norword, Ruskin and Kennington parks and Horniman Gardens (lol, Horny man) There's fecking parks all over the shop. You can't throw a rock without it landing in a bloody park.

Horniman and the Pleasure Gardens is a good name for a disco band fwiw.

They should twin Horniman and the Pleasure Gardens, given the latter is backed on to by the strip of late night gay clubs. One of our IT guys saw two blokes sucking a third guy off there early one morning on his way into work. Some kid got stabbed there and a trap died a while back too. It spends half its life covered in police tape despite their best efforts to gentrify the place.

 

[LitterBug]

I read the whole chain, unbelievable. Reckless comes across as such a snivelling tosser.

Is she wearing a pinstripe Spiderman blazer in this pic? I think I love her.

She is a massive geek. Hundreds of tweets about Star Wars and the sort.

 

[Member 5225]

Fair enough if that's your opinion. From my point-of-view the kids raised some important issues and Cameron dodged a lot of them. He also made a faux-pas when discussing LGBT issues and resorted to reductio ad absurdam to answer the point about voting age. Not very convincing under any circumstances.

Milliband's doing the same thing on Friday and I imagine he'll have to explain his positions on many of the same issues, if he's more convincing/appealing to a young audience that's not the BBC's fault. The questions were from a studio audience of young people and it was made for Radio 1, not exactly the Tories' target demographic. If Cameron wanted an easy ride he should have gone on BBC3 or Classical FM.

huh? how?

 

[Member 5225]

I haven't listened to the show but are kids not supposed to be immature? Newsbeat sounds like a kids show too.

the host seemed a kid too!

 

[Mockney]

They should twin Horniman and the Pleasure Gardens, given the latter is backed on to by the strip of late night gay clubs. One of our IT guys saw two blokes sucking a third guy off there early one morning on his way into work. Some kid got stabbed there and a trap died a while back too. It spends half its life covered in police tape despite their best efforts to gentrify the place.

The aforementioned tramp monument is situated next to a shit little lido thing called "Cock Pond"....Whoever's in charge of Lambeth's PR has clearly missed a trick by not trying to rebrand it as a gay paradise. Nothing says gentrified like gays.

 

[Jippy]

The aforementioned tramp monument is situated next to a shit little lido thing called "Cock Pond"....Whoever's in charge of Lambeth's PR has clearly missed a trick by not trying to rebrand it as a gay paradise. Nothing says gentrified like gays.

I think it is already a gay mecca tbh. Speaking of tramp monuments, I was very disappointed to walk miles to visit Plaza de George Orwell in Barcelona only to find it was grotty, unkempt little square seemingly populated by half of the city's tramps, drinking special brew.

 

[Walrus]

I hate the negative politics in this country. None of the parties seem remotely interested in actually talking about how they are going to run the country, what they are going to do differently to the others, and actually laying out some proper policies. Instead they spend 90% of their time just picking holes in the other parties and saying why we shouldnt vote for x,y,z - not why we should vote for them.

I am undecided because so far, none of the parties have said anything that is of any real interest to me, other than the same vague promises. Most parties seem to be in agreement on a few major issues such as tuition fees.

I would quite happily vote for a "no bullshit" party, or for a complete changing of the guard as far as UK political parties go.

Edit: Thinking about it, politicians remind me a lot of top flight footballers nowadays in how they act.

 

[jeff_goldblum]

huh? how?

I've outlined this on a previous page, I can't be bothered to go into it again (especially since the last time I did people just started throwing around homophobic and transphobic slurs). In any case, Cameron apologized for making the faux-pas when he got pulled up on it by an audience member so he clearly saw it as a faux-pas, even if you don't.

 

[Member 5225]

I've outlined this on a previous page, I can't be bothered to go into it again (especially since the last time I did people just started throwing around homophobic and transphobic slurs). In any case, Cameron apologized for making the faux-pas when he got pulled up on it by an audience member so he clearly saw it as a faux-pas, even if you don't.

Was a childish argument; think DC was just being polite.

 

[Cheesy]

I hate the negative politics in this country. None of the parties seem remotely interested in actually talking about how they are going to run the country, what they are going to do differently to the others, and actually laying out some proper policies. Instead they spend 90% of their time just picking holes in the other parties and saying why we shouldnt vote for x,y,z - not why we should vote for them.

I am undecided because so far, none of the parties have said anything that is of any real interest to me, other than the same vague promises. Most parties seem to be in agreement on a few major issues such as tuition fees.

I would quite happily vote for a "no bullshit" party, or for a complete changing of the guard as far as UK political parties go.

Edit: Thinking about it, politicians remind me a lot of top flight footballers nowadays in how they act.

This is why I often find it strange when politicians are baffled at the level of apathy among voters. If you have two mates that hate each other and spend all their time telling you how much of a dick the other is, you eventually end up disliking both of them.

I think the Tories have probably been the worst for their negative campaigning lately though. Labour are a mixed bag: they've been improving a lot in England, hence why Miliband's public image is improving, but their campaigning in Scotland has been embarrassingly poor at times.

 

[Walrus]

This is why I often find it strange when politicians are baffled at the level of apathy among voters. If you have two mates that hate each other and spend all their time telling you how much of a dick the other is, you eventually end up disliking both of them.

I think the Tories have probably been the worst for their negative campaigning lately though. Labour are a mixed bag: they've been improving a lot in England, hence why Miliband's public image is improving, but their campaigning in Scotland has been embarrassingly poor at times.

Pretty much. I have been utterly apathetic of UK politics ever since reaching the voting age for this reason (and im now 27) - it isnt borne out of ignorance but rather a complete disinterest in the pathetic negative brand of politics that the main parties now try to flog.

I wont even pretend to have seen enough this time round to make a reasonable judgement on which party is the worst for it, they all seem more or less as bad as each other.

 

[Chorley1974]

You conflate what your mates/colleagues say into what 'people think', you expanded a personal experience of NHS procurement into 'NHS waste'. If you feel 'bullied' it's only because your opinions don't stand up to scrutiny.

The NHS procurement example, was something, granted, based on my experience as a very experienced procurement guy who's bought IT on an enterprise scale for several very large companies, I know what good looks like. I used it as an example to illustrate that the NHS outsourcing non core services may not be a bad idea in some cases. The data I have from this is that I saved the NHS a shit load of cash, and that they really aren't experts in buying IT, and why should they be, it's not their core business. Scrutiny in this case means your opinion, which differs, fair enough, but to say I conflate this is not true. I don't have an agenda to insource, or outsource, as far as the NHS is concerned, I was just interested as to why outsourcing seems to be viewed as a wholly bad thing within the NHS by some folks.

Followed by more scrutiny on my opinion that we should have a referendum on EU membership, dismissed because of the facts that Mike had presented, a yougov poll. There's loads of polls, and I'm sure we can all find some to support our views, if we wish. I'm not anti EU, I do think there has been so much scope creep with the EU since we first joined that it's about time we revisit the assumption that it's in the UK's interests to be a member. There are members of the EEA who aren't in the EU who seem to manage without being a member, it's not so crazy to think we should put this put to referendum bearing in mind X,Y, and Z polls.

 

[711]

If the Conservatives win this election then businesses here and abroad will delay investment until after the referendum, or invest elsewhere. The disruption to planning by both state and private bodies will be immense, and parliament will be hamstrung too.
On the plus side a referendum could give some stability for a period afterwards, and will at least be entertaining.

 

[MajorTom]

Would've nipped down the Nags to have a pint with Reckless if I knew he was going to be there. St George's as a national holiday? Has the world gone mad? It is clearly racist to celebrate St George's day.

 

[Jippy]

This non-prosecution of Lord Janner is now being used as a political football by Labour oafs. Simon Danzuk (I think it was) said the DPP should ignore legal process and 'bear in mind the public mood'. Get yer pitchforks out.
The DPP said she was just acting on doctor's orders. Shit position Alison Saunders has been put in.

 

[Jippy]

If the Conservatives win this election then businesses here and abroad will delay investment until after the referendum, or invest elsewhere. The disruption to planning by both state and private bodies will be immense, and parliament will be hamstrung too.
On the plus side a referendum could give some stability for a period afterwards, and will at least be entertaining.

If Labour win rich folk from around the world will flock her and employ loads of people and shedloads. Or feck off to Switzerland like Alan Howard.

 

[711]

If Labour win rich folk from around the world will flock her and employ loads of people and shedloads. Or feck off to Switzerland like Alan Howard.

Thanks for the knee-jerk, but I wasn't being party-political, I would have said the same about any party proposing a referendum.

 

[Snake Plissken]

Good to see Mata on question time. Doubt he'll be backing UKIP

 

[Cheesy]

Good to see Mata on question time. Doubt he'll be backing UKIP

Good to see Anderson in front of him as well.