egafd.com

"I'm not having the best of days today and EVERYONE must suffer!!"

No suffering for me. The problem is entirely yours. Maybe you should avoid posting when you are in a "EVERYONE must suffer" mood.

D

I feel guilty about this little spat.* If I'd not said anything this would never have happened!



































* Not really!

max_tranmere wrote:

> Lots of interesting comments there. On the issue of whether
> Brown and Cameron may have to live in Downing Street at the
> same time, I don't why why they wouldn't - after all a hung
> parliament would be a coalition of two parties running the
> country.

While some people may argue that there isn't much difference between Labour and the Conservatives, that you think the two might form a coalition just goes to show how weak a grip you have on reality!!! IF there is a hung parliament, then either Labour OR the Conservatives will have to get the support of one of the "minor" parties. In such a coalition, however ad-hoc it may or may not be, the Prime Minister (and, just in case you didn't understand earlier, there can only be ONE person with that title) will be the leader of the larger party within that coalition. If you still believe Brown and Cameron will share No 10 in the manner you describe then I'll have no option but to try and have you certified as a lunatic... the best way I can think of to have the vote removed from you (as the thought of someone like you having the vote frightens me)


[SNIP]


> As far as getting Bills through the Commons, when there is a
> coalition, I imagine it will be very difficult. Sweetners have
> often had to have been given to the Northern Ireland parties or
> to the Scottish Nationalists in order for a Government with a
> small majority to get a majority in its favour for the Bill to
> be passed. The most diffucult period any PM has had in recent
> times was when John Major had hardly any majority in the 1990's
> and Bills often had to be debated several times. The Massricht
> Bill was the hardest for him and he got so fed up that by, I
> think, the 3rd reading Major threatened to call a General
> Election if it was not passed. The Conservative Whips used to
> bully backbenchers into voting with the Government. If there is
> a coalition in a few months time it will be interesting to see
> how hard it will be to get Bills through, sweeteners will be
> given to the smaller parties on a large scale, and the
> machinery of Government will come near to grinding to a halt
> quite often I think.

As I said in an earlier post, minority Government's have nonetheless manged to carry on the day to day business of running the country. If you think about it, a political party is a coalition anyway... the Thatcher Government was one of the most divided ever, with a small cabal of ministers who were, like Thatcher herself, hard line monetarists, whilst the majority (old fashioned Tories like George Young, Francis Pym and Ian Gilmour) were what she described as "wet".

Go back a few more years and the Labour party tore itself apart thanks to infighting between the hard left and the moderate right. Right wing Labour MPs had more in common with wet Tories than the left wing of their own party! You may recall that four prominent Labour MPs (all former cabinet ministers) left to form the SDP which later merged with the Liberals to become the Lib Dems we know today. Indeed during the 1992 election, one member of that "Gang of Four", David Owen, even urged voters to vote Tory rather than let Kinnock win, and it is well known that John Major even considered giving him a cabinet post. He now sits in the Lords as a cross-bencher, having refused to remain in the party he helped found.

In many respects it may be easier for a coalition of leftish-leaning Tories and the Lib Dems to govern as a coalition than say either one of the two major parties on their own. Given both have been moving ever more toward the centre ground (and hence why it's difficult to distinguish between either) if neither command a majority, the extremes in both the parties will try and drag their parties away from the centre. The left in the Labour party will blame the defeat on the fact that the party isn't socialist enough and will try and see a return to its core values, whilst the right in the Conservative party (and especially so if UKIP and the BNP do well) will try and drag the party to the right to try and reclaim its "lost" voters.

All in all, the next election should prove to be very interesting and may see some major upheavals withing at least one of the major parties, if not both.

planeterotica wrote:

> I wouldnt take to much notice of the polls, remember when
> Kinnock held his pr-election party to celebrate his forthcoming
> win because the polls predicted a landslide for him, boy did he
> have egg on his face and so did the polls, i suspect there are
> still a lot of undecided voters as yet so it is to soon to call
> a result !wink!
>


I don't think the polls were necessarily wrong at the time. Had Kinnock not had his "victory party" before the election he may well have won, as the polls had originally indicated. The sight of him shouting "oh yeah!!! ...oh yeah!!!" probably put many hundreds of thousands off.

One thing the polling organisations learnt from the 1992 election was the reticence of the electorate to admit to thinking about voting Tory... a lesson they have heeded ever since.

Bob Singleton wrote:

> One thing the polling organisations learnt from the 1992
> election was the reticence of the electorate to admit to
> thinking about voting Tory... a lesson they have heeded ever
> since.
>
planeterotica wrote:

And this is the reason i believe the Tories will fair better come the election than the polls are currently predicting. the so called undecided voters have actually made up their minds who they will be voting for but are not telling the pollsters.

People often say it was Neil Kinnock hosting a party in an arena in Sheffield where he kept saying "Alright! Alright! Alrighht!!!" and so on that messed it up for him. In my view it was The Sun newspaper going so hard against him on election day. "If this Welsh windbag wins today will the last one to leave Britain please turn out the lights". They had a picture of Kinnock in a lightblub on the cover. What annoys me is that this was Rupert Murdoch deciding who should run the country, a man who is foreign, has never lived here, can not vote here, and pays no tax here. It was also, rather ironcially and annoyingly, The Sun newspaper who spent most of the period from 1992 to 1997 telling us how awful the Tories were, when it was down to them that the Tories were in power!

Bob, most of what you said I was well aware of. I was not under the impression that a hung parliament/coalition would involve one PM, like in a single party situation, and then them having to buddy-up with the second largest party to form a Government. It will be interesting when the Election comes. However to quote something Ken Livingstone said back in the 1980s: "if voting changed anything they'd abolish it"...

True. If you hadn't posted, you wouldn't have been treated like a cunt by Porn Historian. But apparently he was having a bit of a turn and letting off steam. So that's alright then. He seems better today which is the main thing. After all that is the main purpose of the Board for all of us?

D