The Miliband future will not be televised….not by the BBC, not by anyone.
That may come as a surprise to anyone who has been following the BBC’s election coverage and had been left with the impression that Miliband was a force to be reckoned with, one that was growing in popularity and stature as the momentum of his campaign grew and carried him inevitably into No10.
Nicola Sturgeon didn’t rate Miliband as PM material and even little Owen Jones is now pointing out that he wrote up Labour’s policies as lacking any real substance last year.
And that indeed was Labour’s problem, one the BBC did its best to bury. Miliband was the eternal student, lacking any experience of the world outside politics he fought the campaign on clever wheezes designed to catch the voters eye with guaranteed headlines whilst hoping no one would challenge the viability and substance of each new populist policy. In that he had a valuable ally, the BBC, which rarely bothered itself to examine in depth his policies whilst giving him massive headlines and a write up that suggested he was leading the way, shaping the political narrative. Energy price freezes, mansion taxes, predistribution, paying for the NHS with ‘whatever it takes’ and claiming he had it all paid for, the ending of non-dom status, the Falkirk selection scandal, stabbing his brother in the back….all variously ignored, downplayed, bigged up or defended to the hilt by the BBC.
Jon Pienaar now says that he always knew Miliband’s non-dom policy ‘didn’t ring true’ and indeed he originally said that the revelation of Ball’s own defence of non-dom status was ‘The mother and father of all banana skins’ however as we pointed out previously the BBC then carried on as if Balls hadn’t said that or that if he had, then things had changed and Labour, with their ‘independent economic advisor’, not, had found a way to make the policy pay.
Pienaar is now also saying that he knew Cameron would get a majority and had been saying it around the office for a long time….why did he not share his thoughts with the public if this is what he believed would happen?….after all that is what he is known for…providing analysis using his own interpretation of the political situation…he isn’t normally so shy about giving us his thoughts.
Some interesting comments from others today….Uber lefty Ken Livingstone blamed New Labour’s legacy for the current failure…saying that millions of quality jobs were lost under Labour to be replaced by low paid, low status jobs.
Dan Hodges admits Miliband stabbed Miliband….‘There were other eyes watching him. From the very beginning, when he stood on that stage in Manchester and looked directly at his own brother and told him “David, I love you”. Straight after he’d killed him off.’
We also kept hearing today that Labour had moved too far to the left under Miliband….when did you ever hear the BBC raising that criticism of Red Ed?
The BBC was all too enthralled by the ‘new political landscape’ (as they were with Occupy)…..apparently we were all fed up with the old politics and there was supposedly a massive move to the left, it was definitely the end of two party politics…..and curiously this election was the first that would bring that about…ignoring the fact of the last 5 years having been a coalition government. No one party would ever get a ruling majority again…..indeed even today after the Tory ‘landslide’ shock, relatively speaking, the BBC bods were pushing the line that Labour would never get a majority again after losing so badly in Scotland….they never learn…..filling the airwaves with endless speculation that is nearly always proved wrong by events.
We also hear from Labour that the problem was that they didn’t challenge the narrative that they caused the financial meltdown….bit hard to do that when they did cause it as even Miliband himself admits the recession was due to the lack of bank regulation..however the BBC has always preferred not to examine Labour’s record on that if at all possible.
Labour lost despite the massive support of the BBC, and Russell Brand….his fleeting support now withdrawn as he blames the Establishment and the right wing Press for stitching up Miliband….but he’s just a comedian with a laptop and a bit of mouth he tells us, what does he know?….if you can’t beat the Establishment get compassionate with your neighbour….
The BBC got their campaign, sorry, reporting, massively wrong….the whole tenor of their reporting giving Miliband a substance and credibility he just didn’t have. Miliband’s policies were all show and no go, Miliband himself would never have been able to withstand the SNP assault and he’d have been reliant on them to stay in office…in other words Fallon was right to raise the concerns about what Miliband would compromise in order to stay in No10.
The BBC’s election reporting was ultimately one huge fail having set out to defend and prop up the faltering Miliband instead of sticking to reporting the facts. Every time Miliband made a cock up the BBC would desperately cast around for something negative about Cameron to balance out the negative press Miliband was getting…Miliband is massively slated for his ‘Edstone’ and suddenly all we hear on the BBC is that a Libdem has suddenly remembered an amazing conversation between Clegg and Cameron in which Cameorn said he thought he wouldn’t get a majority….non-news plastered all over the BBC….was someone trying to distract us from the Miliband farce? Lucy Powell, Miliband’s strategist, admits damningly that the pledges carved in stone didn’t actually mean he would not break some of them….and Pienaar comes on to tell us she of course didn’t mean that at all, that wasn’t what she was saying…well yes it was Jon.
All in all the BBC had a bad election, not as bad as Miliband’s, but bad. Their analysis of what is happening in politics proving to be way off course…..a single party has won a majority and the population is not moving to the left, Miliband would have been absolutely dominated by Sturgeon and his policies were so much smoke and mirrors.
If you’d relied on the BBC for your news you’d never have guessed the true state of politics in the UK.
The Mail says…
BBC must now pay the price for its blatant anti-Conservative bias
As the results filtered through, and the scale of the Tory victory became clear, the BBC seemed to go into official mourning over the phenomenal losses suffered by Labour and the Lib Dems.
It was as if the Corporation, in its despair over the collapse of the Left, believed the whole nation shared its anguish.
Nothing could have been further from the truth, and once more the BBC missed the real story — the remarkable, historic triumph of conservatism.
This abrogation of its responsibility as a public broadcaster will, inevitably, have an effect on its future, as the BBC’s licence fee comes under increasing scrutiny.
Undoubtedly, a new and energised Tory Government will look closely at the issue of whether this Left-leaning, management-heavy behemoth should be subsidised by a compulsory tax on TV viewers.
I’m sure it didn’t help the Labour campaign that late on, after a vicious attack on those using legitimate tax avoidance vehicles – describing tax avoidance as aggressive & dodgy, that prominent Labour MPs were then shown to have taken similar opportunities themselves or within their families.
The electorate tend not to like the whiff of hypocrisy, especially after the Expenses Scandal.
One of the key tax avoidance vehicles being the film funding tax scheme. How Labour and the BBC wailed and gnashed about the evil tax avoiders investing in these schemes (though strangely not the Labour-supporting tax avoiders, only the known Tory ones such as Gary Barlow), conveniently forgetting to tell us Labour set up this tax-break scheme in 1997.
And they’re quite happy to moan about the wealthy who have made their money through sheer hard work and personal sacrifice, but not the wealthy who have made their money playing football, guitars, or by being nothing more than celebrities.
Oddly non of the sdp/lab/green/any other loony seems unable to accept that its their ridiculous hard left policies that made them unelectable, and the SNP success only confuses them more, they completely ignore the fact its vote and performance is based in nationalism and all their other policies really dont matter that much to the scots.
Oh, I dunno DD – I think the promise of a free ride to a land of government-sponsored milk and honey also appeals to them.
“The government had lost the will of the people. Therefore, it was time for them to elect a new people”. (with apologies to Bertolt Brecht)
As a committed Marxist old Berty knew a thing or two. He was being cynical when he said this, but fellow travellers in the BBC take it quite literally.
Well the New Labour crime family certainly tried to do that with its immigration policies after 1997.
Just to be clear on Non-Dom status. I have pension pots in other countries and because I am UK based I pay the tax on those pensions in the UK not in the country of origin.
There are non-Dom agreements (Govt to Govt) with some 80 countries. The system works like this. You contact HMRC and request a domicile tax status certificate from them. You then complete forms relevant to the State in which the tax is currently payable stating that you pay tax to HMRC. HMRC then forward forms to that State.
This is a basic arrangement between 2 States that ensures that people don’t pay tax in both or many countries. It insures fairness in the tax system for the individual. In many instances UK tax rates are a lot lower than the country of origin and it is a benefit for the tax payer to have UK tax residence.
On the other side of the coin if such agreements were cancelled how many companies and individuals would review their business arrangements in the UK if they were called upon to pay double tax?
That’s just a fact. Miliband didn’t do facts, he did sixth form political agitprop. As far as he was concerned, you are a rich Tory who only got your money by stealing it from the workers, and you therefore deserve to have it stolen right back.
If the other hand you are a socialist politician who got your three kitchens (in your three houses) by helping yourself (via the tax system) to wealth created by others (including the working poor) then your thievery is praised by the BBC as manifesting a social conscience.
‘…he had a valuable ally, the BBC’
And they, they imagined, one in him.
Yet…
Chickens returning to roost spring to mind.
I do hope it’s squeaky bum time in W1A this weekend.
Speaking of which, the latest episode of W1A again had me intrigued by who has been let loose with the script.
I wonder if it’s the same pollsters telling the BBC this gentle ribbing will get the public onside as told them and Labour everyone loved their messages?
Yes, no… brilliant.
Is the BBC too left-wing for the UK?
No, don’t be silly, of course that wasn’t a question asked of the post-election Question Time panel.
Instead we got ‘is Labour too right-wing for Scotland?’
So, in response, we ask ourselves – who are these kilted-Che Guevaras? We ask – who are these we’ll take the high road long marching Maoists? See-you Lenin?
We have to ask ourselves because the BBC take it as read. It’s all in the natural course of things.
Well, I’ll tell you. They are a voting group well primed in grievance not Guevara. They have been promised free government spending with some other nation picking up the tax bill. Think Greece without the sunshine. Shortbread not olives.
So what was the point of a post election QT -bit of a fag end, surely?
Well I began to understand when Jeremy Vine popped up before hand with a teaser for a show taking the BBC contrived theme ‘did you get what you want?’
Well if you didn’t then something odd must have happened to your brain on the way back from the polling booth. We just had the bloody democratic process – bit early to fester grievance isn’t it BBC?
I really come to understand the point of this QT edition when Paddy Pantsdown and Ali Campbell link arms and blame their respective teams pasting on…. well certainly not on Scotland for ‘100% Scottish’ Campbell… wait for it…. Cameron cooked up the SNP as a nasty Tory plot.
So there you go, there’s your new BBC narrative for the next little while.
If Alistair Campbell was born in England, but does not consider himself English, and identifies with his parents’ homeland, I wonder if it has crossed his nasty warped mind that the millions of young “British Asians” his party imported feel exactly the same way?
You’re having a laugh aren’t you, Rob? Like a true lefty Campbell has a very selective mind, one that was exposed perfectly on QT when an audience member pointed out that he happily encouraged a right on LBGT feminazi to go for making a change by becoming an MP yet told the rest of us that we can’t have change by having a referendum on the EU?
The man who’s English but claims to be more Scottish (maybe the torn loyalty explains his mental health issues ,loyalty.. an issue many Scots traitors have suffered from including the Campbell clan who slaughtered the McDonalds to further their own cause and the Scot who betrayed William Wallace for English gold ) yet takes full part living in England, making his living from an English political party funded by working class union dues from people who then have no say on their future, and in supporting McBurnley Town FC, an English football club. Strange.
He is as deluded as Brand.
“I wonder if it has crossed his nasty warped mind that the millions of young “British Asians” his party imported feel exactly the same way?”
Well Rob they didn’t vote for the party with the Jewish leader.
Very true, and given the votes it gets from the Religion of Peace, I doubt Labour will ever have another Jewish leader, even an atheist one like Miliband.
Your article is spot on!
What this highlights more than anything is that the leftie London centric TV media (BBC, Sky, Ch4) has become a decrepit echo chamber. Unable to look beyond or challenge its own prejudices because they recruit from the same narrow-minded set of urban, arts-educated liberals. Increasingly won’t give air time to anyone who challenges their biased leftie mindset.
How totally wrong they got the mood of the population. How many times did we here the same banal cliches from BBC TV reports playing into Labour’s narrative:
“People are just so disengaged from politics” = wrong, 65% of people voted
“The NHS is the top of everyone’s election priorities” = wrong, it’s the economy, jobs & security
“People just aren’t feeling the benefits of the recovery” = wrong, consumer confidence is up
“Were at the end of 2-party politics” = wrong, England con 41%/ lab 30% is at historical norm
I t also emerged that there were several polls out just before the election that showed conservatives were streets ahead of Labour, but the BBC chose to ignore them as they thought they must be wrong! How arrogant of them!
By their coverage now, you’d think Labour had won. Endlessly droning on about how the public “just didn’t see” the obvious charms of their leader. Was it the bacon sarny, was it nasty tories going on about SNP? No actually, it was that his policies were crap student pop-socialism and dug up from the failed decade of the 70s.
They start from their political prejudices, and then go out into the world to try and confirm them, in an effort to get us to share them.
They do not start from the way the world is, report it, so that we can make up our own mind. They are not only ignorant of the world, they despise ordinary lives. Their default expression is a sneer.
I watched the ITV coverage of the election. It was quiet and thoughtful. Guests were asked questions and allowed to give answers.
The BBC is just Stalinist crap. I watch it and it is not only irritating it makes me ashamed to be human. If aliens are watching the BBC from light years away, when they arrive I feel tempted to apologize.
Brendan O’Neill gets it spot on in this brilliant analysis of demise of Labour and liberal progressives:
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/election-2015-social-democracy-is-dead.-dont-mourn/16955#.VU3QZY5Viko
What concerns me now is what will BBC output be like, if we have an “Obama” moment in the UK.
Just imagining such a prospect is enough to go into exile. But where?
Are you thinking of Chukabutty O’ Mooner?
Could see his oily-tongued metrosexual Islington utterings going down a bomb in t’ North. Not.
Exactly.
Brand is a mouthy twat and the BBC are biased. Frankly it makes me want to burn stuff. But as I lead a comfortable middle class life in a beautiful middle class house, I can’t bring myself to do it – thirty fucking years to late. Anyway, here is my contribution to the great debate:Readandweep: http://flaxensaxon.blogspot.co.nz/2015/05/dudley-has-decideddivided.html
I like your line about “Ed Milletseed”
An entertaining piece of even-handed satire. Nice one.
What will really get the BBC wallahs in a twist is if Jeremy Clarkson was appointed DG of BBC.
Time to really put the frighteners up the Leftards at the McBBC – Cameron should appoint Boris the Culture Secretary on Monday.
To save you all time which you will never get back I give you a Précis of Russell Brand ‘s lecture to the nation .
Well you know I’m not a political well if we were nice to each other we need compassion the bankers will there are serious hell what you have to do yhbfrghnf cd them defragmenter grill swefhnmffbtrhhthjyytrrhjn ggfgd.
Buy my book .
And I hope you are wiser and don’t fear the future now plank head has told you .
Is that the book that he is happy to have on Amazon, that disgusting outlet that pays virtually nil tax thus condemning a swathe of bone idle, I’ll do what I want, paid for by us council house dwelling, multi children spewing, cigarette smoking, Stella drinking, 50 inch TV watching, ambitionless, British…err..working class? To a life of drudgery?
Interesting article C. Thanks for the reference.
‘Neil Kinnock musing over the ‘self-delusion’ of the electorate; Polly Toynbee speaking of the ‘mind-blowing ignorance’ of some of the electorate who are ‘weak readers’ and don’t know what is in their best interests, Brand and other celeb Labour-backers blaming Murdoch and his tabloids’ fearmongering for losing Labour votes’.
They really do not get it do they. Beckett on Sky this morning said Labour shouldn’t pontificate to the electorate. She then went on to explain that the media didn’t properly explain Liebours message so that voters could understand it. Apparently the electorate only want a brief explanation of policies at election time, and then we don’t want to be bothered with all that difficult political stuff the rest of the time. Then turned on the interviewer for having the temerity of questioning whether their message was wrong.
This was followed by the new left media messages – the conservatives stoked up Nationalism in the Scots, they unfairly turned on their coalition partners and destroyed them, Cameron is going to have big problems with his slim majority and troublesome backbenchers, and there is going to be two years of chaos against the wishes of ALL businessmen because they are daring to put Europe to the people !!
Did the election actually take place or was I dreaming. No two year honeymoon period like they gave BLiar then !!
Polly Toynbee speaking of the ‘mind-blowing ignorance’ of some of the electorate who are ‘weak readers’ and don’t know what is in their best interests…
It’s remarkable how Dame Polly and the others fail to understand that the voters can distinguish between what they SAY – send your kids to a bog-standard comprehensive, go green – and what they DO – private school; the villa in Tuscany. It’s the hypocrisy that kills them.
Toynbee comes from the elitist Champagne socialist brigade who think political issues are beyond the understanding of the hoi polloi.
“No two year honeymoon period like they gave BLiar then !!”
The BBC honeymoon for Tony Blair ran from 1997 until he had the temerity to actually stand up for something and get involved in invading Iraq. Saddam would still be in charge today in all probability if he had been open with the nuclear inspectors!
Apparently the electorate only want a brief explanation of policies at election time, and then we don’t want to be bothered with all that difficult political stuff the rest of the time.
So brief, in fact, you could almost miss ’em. Like a certain mass immigration policy kept ‘discreetly brief’ in Labour’s 1997 manifesto.
“This was followed by the new left media messages – the Conservatives stoked up Nationalism in the Scots, they unfairly turned on their coalition partners and destroyed them, Cameron is going to have big problems with his slim majority and troublesome backbenchers, and there is going to be two years of chaos against the wishes of ALL businessmen because they are daring to put Europe to the people !!”
Jesus Christ they have repeated that mantra about 10 million times already, and the Election was only on Thursday.
The media, and the BBC in particular did seem to miss that many people had genuine concerns over Miliband/Balls on the economy, and over the SNP holding the balance in a hung parliament.
On the economy, it really shouldn’t have come as that much of a surprise, given that every poll was giving the conservatives a huge lead on this issue. It does feel that this was largely ignored in the campaign, and the commentariat convinced themselves that Miliband was doing well – this was based on the premise that he’d “exceeded expectations” in the debates, therefore was “looking statesman-like”, and was no longer a liability.
It was as if they’d convinced themselves that, because Miliband avoided eating a bacon sandwich during the debates, he’d therefore proven himself, and dispelled any concerns that the electorate had over his policies.
Similarly, on the SNP, the Guardian / BBC tend to talk about this through the context of “Cameron whips up nationalism in order to scare voters about the SNP” – as if were Cameron not to talk about it, the issue would go away – I suppose it’s easier to do that, rather than to admit / explore the fact that ordinary people in the marginals had genuine concerns about the SNP in government, and voted against it.
How ridiculous ,absurd that any of the media is Labour Biased thats the bloody problem the media is owned,run and rammed down our the countrys throat ‘the Establishment’
Democracy? Your having a laugh ! And thats before the Tories change the boundaries into their favour.
Ask anyone from the poor areas of London,Gtr Manchester the NE,Scotland and Liverpool if the BBC is biased for Labour and they will laugh in your face.
We are not as daft as you want us to be.
OK post up more then 10 Tory’s /UKIP/or anyone right leaning in any way publicly working for the BBC! show me on pro Tory tweet or public comment by a BBC staffer !
No, the boundaries will be made fair so that inner city Labour shoe-ins have as many voters as the larger rural Conservative shoe-ins.
That’s called democracy.
The fact is this country is a predominantly conservative country and ridding ourselves of the Scottish yoke has proven this.
Either Labour returns to the centre or Labour is more toast than good old Nigel.
and just how many votes has liebour gained from mass immigration
I’m afraid JW you do appear to be as daft as we think you are. The boundary changes are as a result of reviews by the individual Home Country Boundary Commission bodies set up to ensure that constituencies are approximately the same size in geographic areas and number of voters. It’s review recommendations should have been implemented long ago except Labour refused to in power because they knew it would not be to their advantage, and the LibDems blocked it in Coalition, reneging on their promise to support it after losing the AV vote .
In addition. you show your ignorance by quoting the standard Scottish, North and Inner London as areas of the ‘poor’ people. Some of the most deprived areas in the country are in the South (Brighton) South West (Cornwall), and West (Bristol), but that doesn’t fit with your partisan script does it.
As with all left wing ‘victims’ and end austerity proponents you fail to understand one simple message …. if you don’t earn the money to spend you can’t support anyone. All these parties that propose to spend billions more to ‘invest’ don’t get it either. If you have to borrow the money YOU don’t decide when it has to end … the lenders do … i.e other countries. If you want an example, try to read about what is happening in Greece at this very moment. I’m sure there will be a Junior Ladybird book somewhere that will try to explain it to you in colours.
The BBC should ask you to do a Paper Review. I say “should” not “will” of course. The wrong sort of diversity.
And thats before the Tories change the boundaries into their favour.
You just gave the lie to the saying ‘ignorance is bliss’. You’re obviously not feeling too blissful, are you? Suggest you read up on the current boundary bias towards Labour. Then learn to live with the election result – the silent majority have once again spoken. (They’re the ones, by the way, who aren’t constantly loud-mouthing their political thoughts on Twitter, Facebook and 5 Live.)
The BBC never talked about that boundary scandal prior to the General Election, now they cannot stop talking about it. Have they just noticed the problem?
For the BBC you can say or vote as you like just so long as you support the Labour Party. Scrapping the BBC would be the biggest single step towards a free society since the defeat of Hitler.
The attempt by the BBC to shut down the free press was one of the biggest scandal of our time. Far bigger than even the expenses scandal. Sack the lot of them – public sector fascists.
Impressive show by Russia’s great army – defenders of Christian culture – at their seventy year celebration. Shame on Cameron for snubbing them; he’d rather be wearing multi-culti Muslim garb. The Russian parade is a contrast to our ‘show’ – the Beeb gave us a black reporter interviewing an ethnic performer from the concert to be presented by Chris Evans. Somehow doesn’t seem to match the Russian show.
We haven’t got enough soldiers to put up much of a show these days, but if the balloon ever went up, I am sure that Katherine Jenkins and Status Quo would do their best.
A statesman would have embraced the chance to bring reconciliation and have Russia and Ukraine brought together to march in celebration of the defeat of Naziism (yes I know the Soviets supported the Nazis and were just as evil but a statesman would interpret history).
A politician would do what goes down best in the short term.
Either abolish the BBC or force it to take advertising.
The BBC involves itself with ratings wars over populist television (when it is not pumping out propaganda) and so it should fight for advertising revenue too.
No to the license. No to a compulsory tax.
Can’t stop laughing at the BBC for blaming Murdoch for the Conservative victory. The BBC ran a pro-Labour propaganda campaign. Just look how many BBC Luvvies came out to support Labour. Martin Freeman, Steve Coogan, Delia Smith, Jo Brand and her son Russell wanted us to vote for that Stone. And to have Jo Brand on HIGNFY to talk about periods the day after the election was a bit much.
Auntie Beeb should have listened to this guys advice.
Well said young man, it’s the way you need to deal with lefties, direct and to the point, they back down every time when you point out the hypocrisy of ALL of their aims.
The BBC us not reporting the most amazing opinion poll failure that of Survation which repressed its final poll, one that reflected the actual results.
It was commissioned by the Daily Mirror so whether it was censoring it for the good of its client or simply to avoid a stampede toward the Tories remains to be seen.
But the admission won’t be headlined by the Beeb and certainly isn’t in today’s BBC website ‘article’ on the pollsters failures.
I heard that report – I think Survation suppressed their accurate poll because it was an “outlier”, out of line with the other polls.
But Survation had previously put the Tories on 38% in one of their polls. So they should have had the balls to publish, nit suppress.
http://survation.com/snatching-defeat-from-the-jaws-of-victory/
BBC back on track with R4 Any Questions. The Tory speaks and is greeted with groans from the audience, while the Labour and LibDem speak attacking the Tories and get applause.
I hope Cameron was listening.
Even worse on Any Answers …
Yes, Mrs jtf just reported back on it. Apparently the reason the electorate got it wrong was because of Murdoch’s mystical brainwashing powers. He must do it whilst we’re asleep, is all I can think – he can’t possibly do it through his newspapers as he doesn’t sell enough of ’em.
I’ve never taken the Murdoch excitement by some too seriously since The Sun, presumably at his command, endorsed Labour, then didn’t.
Because I noted who seemed cool when it did, and how uncool they became when it moved away.
As evidence of a right wing supporting conspiracy it didn’t add up then, and as I look North of the border does not now.
It appears more he reads his audiences’ moods a bit earlier and better than some.
Claiming to represent the nation when clearly trying to reshape it seems much more a BBC ambition.
Yes, on Any Answers the first 22 minutes (out of 28) were spent talking to old lefties from Labour and LibDem, one of them even wanting a return to Clause 4 Nationalisation, The BBC deliberately selected those callers – as if the only issue after the election is how to put the Left back on track.
I listened to it, and it was absolutely hilarious. If the BBC were attempting a self parody they could not have done a better job. Apparently the reason Labour lost was because it did not promise Clause 4 socialism. The BBC clearly cannot believe that the Conservatives won the General Election, and they presume that everyone else is desperately trying to find out “what went wrong”?
Somebody commented that the first 20 minutes sounded like a meeting of the Socialist Workers’ Party. And the simpering Anita Anand went along with all of it – Lord, isn’t she ignorant about politics ?
Yes, all these people on Any Answers don’t seem to realize that the world of “real existing socialism” in its various forms has collapsed all over the world long ago. The Soviet Union was keen on Clause4, pay was more or less equal, there were women street cleaners and women scientists , low cost housing, low cost transport for the masses, no unemployment. Yet it all went tits up. The leftist mind connot grasp that if you do A,B,C, etc and you fail then if you do A,B,C, etc again you will fail again.
Venezuela’s 21st-century socialism, with that Saddam lookalike Nicolas Maduro, does not seem to be a utopia either.
Even better say I sir!
We the people of England have voted-and we now all know we`re the majority.
We`ve indulged these lefty parasites for years now.
And(spare me!) Ed Balls was right in one thing.
He accused the likes of Dimbleby of “spending too much time on Twitter, not enough meeting people”
To see the Twitchfuckers, the Tartanazis all raging and preening/weeping on accounts is grand stuff…a golden shower upstream with jobbies floating in it, just as we`ve long known on this fine site.
The more the BBC keep up this crap-and non-stop-the quicker we`ll lob that Edstone round their necks and send them to Savile in the North Sea.
I`m now excused from listening to the BBC for the next five years-WE are the Angry Mob, not them…and why the hell are we paying for this?
Cameron or UKIP should stencil THAT pledge in to bin the License fee-and watch the votes rebuild again for 2015.
“He accused the likes of Dimbleby of “spending too much time on Twitter, not enough meeting people”
Twitter as guage of anything is indeed daft, but it is a valuable initiation tool if used as a first but not only source. But can then whip up fellow bubble dwellers into a lather. Which of course is how the BBC does use it.
However I do love how pols of any hue think they are seriously meeting people in any way realistically when they do it in person.
Some twerp turns up at my door trying to cover the street in half an hour is not there to delve into the complex factors making up my voting intentions, from handing the keys to the Treasury to The Sturge, to when the funds for the pothole gets fixed. But at least it’s a one-in-one, if basic politeness or extreme rudeness will mean what gets shared may be of little real value.
At the level of going full Balls, it descends into farce.
Doorstep or factory floor, shopping mall or school, some sharp-suited PPE lobbing up with an advance guard of Spads and bevvy of media remoras in their wake is, I humbly offer, not going to create an atmosphere conducive to honest, realistic dialogue.
Yes, it did feel watching QT after the election, that it was “back to usual” after the aberration that was last week’s QT
Somebody said this on R4 in the last 24 hours “Labour has lost touch with their supporters, especially in the west, centre and north of England”. (Think it was a re-elected Labour MP.) I can understand this & have pondered what they said.
I think New Labour just doesn’t listen to what people – anyone, not just their supporters – are saying. You get this from the Beeb’s R4 interviews. Presenter asks question, NewLab contributor goes off on anti-Government/anti-Coalition/anti-Conservative diversion. Immediately.
They didn’t listen while in Government. They then spent another five years not listening and doing their ‘thing’. I think they have no real ideas based around Party principles nor will do anything ‘the people’ want and, if they could a policy somewhere (in their archives?) I don’t think they would be able to present it in a fully clear & coherent manner.
The two Eds & the New Labour women were, effectively, the Conservatives secret weapons.
Well of course they don’t listen and when they get thumped instead of trying to explain their policies better they cloak them in lies or change them completely simply to get elected.
If they had principles that coincided with the electorate’s they always be in power.
15 million people voted for the Conservative party and UKIP across England and Wales. Only 9 million people voted for the Labour Party and Green Party. The English people rejected 1970’s socialist (progressive) policies, the English people do not want a Left Wing government. Now that Scotland is lost to the SNP and will be going independent soon, and once the boundary changes are completed, that is the Left Wingers finished in England. The BBC which launched a massively pro-Labour election campaign now needs to wake up, and ask itself whether it should be reflecting public opinion or acting as pro-Labour party cheerleaders.
I always thought that history was written by the victors…well, it is in 99.99% of cases…the other case is the bbc’s pathetic reporting on the ‘unbelievable’ (their words) Tory win where all they can talk about is how it was liebour’s fault that the Tories won, how the people didn’t quite get their ideology, they didn’t quite get their message across.
It’s pathetic, the bbc are like a spoilt jilted bride at the alter, at first she can’t believe that her intended had the audacity to do this to her, then comes the excuses that it was all his fault and it’s his loss, then comes the attacks, the cutting up of suits, the nasty threats, the ‘you’ll never get better than me’ jibe…all the while the intended has seen the light and feels more free than he ever has. The bride, crying and wailing, never admits fault and can’t understand the ‘betrayal’. That will never change.
It’s clear that huge change is required in the UK, the feeling of hatred towards the bbc is growing by the day, if, after this disgustingly biased campaign, the tories don’t take action to neuter the bbc then they will have signed their own death warrant and the next five years will the longest hanging in history, the bbc will take great joy in tightening the noose at every evil opportunity.
The other change is in the voting system, the cry of many voters that their vote is a waste of time was never truer than in this GE. UKIP gains masses of support yet the SNP, Plaid and Libs all have more say in parliament. Once again in backward Britain the minorities hold all the aces.
As for Brand, at last, he has realized that he is an irrelevance, he isn’t Che, he will change nothing, everyone sees him for what he is..a plastic anarchist who sells his books on the very media outlets that he professes to despise, (tell us where your money is stashed Russell) the fantasist lefty garbage that he spouts on the You tube post is as embarrassing as any woman who falls for the ‘charms’ of this self obsessed moron.
Like Brand and Pienaar, every lefty is now wise after the event, will these arrogant, self righteuos, vacuous, do as I say not what I do nobodies accept that they are wrong? Not a chance, now more than ever, they and the bbc will continue to force their agenda until a breaking point is reached.
Essex Man thinks the war is won, it’s only just started.
An absolute joy to be alive here in sunny Wessex.
The local library has yet to bin its latest New Statesman-but what a laugh it turns out to be.
Ed was going to win-the new progressive alliance-Tories and all the good people in the dustbin of history?…amazing what 24 hours is in political scribbling innt bruv?(Brandspeek yeah?).
Anyway-only one line of sense in the whole toxic, bitching heads-up their arses-rag…from(who else?) ANN WIDDICOMBE-on page 37, where Simon Heffer quotes her in saying that the Conservatives will win, though not by much!
A prophet speaketh!
All those pages-and the only word of a truth comes from an old Tory lady via a Tory columnist out on manoevres.
Tells us something dunnit?
…but not the oafish cloth eared lefties…as Don McLean sang.
.”..but they`re not listening still
“perhaps they never will”(Vincent)
No-one`s paying much for that lyric…but it`s more valuable today that screeds of pop drivel as auctioned in “American Pie”
And speaking of prophets?
Fair play to Blair(for this alone), for saying that the Loony left will lose as ever to the right, back in January.
He called it, so I`ve decided to quote him ceaselessly to Labour stooges when I meet them.
Just go to any school, environmental health, charity outlet-BBC if you like-and there`ll be plenty unreconstituted thickies kindly leaving the nation ripe for Nigels New Right in 2025.
Witness Steve Richards(Week in Politics this morning at 11am on Radio 4)-all those years in politics and he`s not learning a f***ing thing.
Still-as I pass Guardianistas staring blindly into their Guardian Election pullout at the results, watering those lattes with tears for the poor?…all this street theatre and comedy gold comes at less than £145.50…it`s free.
Now then-has O`Grady packed his water wings for Venice?…to see Mark Steel and Matthew Norman in the Indy…and Polly in the Guardian is genuine comedy, with whiffs of surreal yet sulphurous fantasy!
Great weekend this one!
“Great weekend this one!”
Bliss it was this dawn to be alive and living in these islands. Pity the poor buggers who live in Pakistan and Russia (especially if [and this goes without saying] they actually are buggers).
Out of the country again for a short period, so I’m just catching up on the news after the working week.
Thoughts this morning ……
1. Ed Balls’ result – couldn’t happen to a ‘better’ Labour MP.
2. George Galloway’s results – couldn’t happen to a worse human being (and I have to use the term very loosely here).
3. Harriet Harman’s result – a great chance wasted.
4. Ed Milliband’s election – touted as a ‘nice guy’, ‘an outstanding political mind’, etc., etc. – shown up for what he really is.
5. The BBC – incredibly partisan during, and almost especially, after, the election. Seems to be trying to claim that nothing but problems will dog the Conservative government (implying that they really shouldn’t have been elected to government).
As for ‘who actually won this election ?’ – well,the BBC’s attitude seems to be…. let’s just move on to the criticism before anybody gets too uppity in the Conservative Party, and actually gets to express any pleasure in the election results. And, oh by the way, the Conservative government really needs to be following the policies of, for instance, the Labour, Green and Lib Dem Parties, rather than their own manifesto. The BBC should be told where to put itself – it is NOT an elected body.
6. The SNP – apparently the BBC thinks they are going to take up the mantle as the main opposition party, given the coverage they have had just on this morning’s Today programme. Still no examination of the SNP’s policies for the UK, probably because they amount to nothing more than some wishy-washy, fact-free, plan-free, left-wing, wish-list. I note they didn’t interview the 20-year-old student SNP MP on the radio this morning – I wonder why ? – but having heard her speak very briefly after her win, I think I can figure that out. The knuckle-draggers’ party claim to be intent on working constructively within the UK parliament – right, if you define ‘constructive approach’ as being synonymous with working assiduously towards destroying the UK, and in the meantime demanding selfish preference for their constituents only.
7. David Cameron – has the perfect opportunity now, and given that most of his party’s policies will just flow on from where we are today, should concentrate on the early actions as follows, and probably in that order….
a. LEVEL the playing field – i.e. Legislate for English Votes for English Laws
b. Level the playing field – get the democratic boundaries in place for the whole electorate.
c. Level the playing field – find some way of getting Mr Bercow out of the Speaker’s Chair (and probably consequently, his wife off the front pages of the press).
d. Ignore what will become the ever-shriller bleating of the SNP to start passing increasing benefits to Scotland immediately – continue to work on those things promised by his party (i.e. not by Gordon Brown) for greater devolution, at a reasonable pace, and remind Nicola Sturgeon (and Alex Salmond for that matter) they they belong to a minority party in the UK, and that their particular interests have no greater importance than those of the rest of the UK.
e. Start preparing for the dismantling of the media dominance that is the state-funded monstrosity of the BBC.
f. Get all of the above out of the way first and don’t leave it till too late, or to be at the whim of other parties, for instance, if a few of his back-benchers start getting fractious.
it now seems jimmy cranky doesnt want ffa after all, the british magic money tree still appears to appeal to the snp , at least until the oil price goes crazy again
Interesting to read on McBBC that the Cranky one’s little army of SNP MPs will now work towards ending austerity.
Typical Socialist in denial and attempting to rewrite the election result (and history) already. Give them FFA as soon as possible because with the SNP’s mathematic skills (all Progressive Parties’ total share seats still equals a minority) and their decimated oil revenue, it won’t be long before we have another failed state to send our enormous overseas budget aid to. Oh, wait a moment….
Luv the TartanNazis name used earlier. Perfect description to describe their intimidatory election techniques. I spoke to a friend in Scotland recently who said people were terrified to even mention who they were voting in public if it was anyone other than the TartnNazis (ooh was that a Freudian typo slip .. I like it !!).
Anyone catch the TV interview with a TartnNazi MEP and the leader of the Scottish Conservatives last night. So much for working for the interests of all the British people and not wanting a new referendum. Even the interviewer was taken aback .. No beating about the bush … we want independence, a new referendum AND the continuation of the Barnett Formula+ … until we can stand on our own feet … or as Ruth Davidson said … until the oil price recovers lol.
Scottish Nationalism is all about oil. If North Sea oil had not been discovered, the SNP would have remained an embittered party of National Socialists muttering about English oppression. It is only oil, and the desire to keep all the proceeds for themselves, which has fuelled the rise of Scottish nationalism. In 30 0r 40 years, there will be no oil, and if the Union is still in place, the SNP will die with the last oil field.
Who invented, promoted and infiltrated our European lands with this leftist marxist communist poison?
I hear muslims mentioned a lot on here, only it was the other kind of dodgy arabs that created this Hell and run every industry, media organisation and institute across Europe.
Yes the BBC is biased, it’s run like our governments top to bottom by communist jews.
What a strange website devoted to uncovering the blatant lies and propaganda of the Hebe-Bee-Cee, yet not one commentator actually targeting the true criminals behind it.
Scott? Is that you? Take your pills dear you are starting to foam at the mouth again.
as a first time ukip voter, i am still bemused how ukip got 5 million votes in return for only 1 mp.the snp get 1.2 million votes in return for 56 mps,if the electoral system was fair ukip should have at least 138 mps in partliament on there percentage of votes,as for red ed ,what a discrace he was to his voters,his total stubborn selfishness and lust to be prime minister cost the labour party big time and i think the labour party are finished now as a political entity and will be out of power for at least a generation,lets hope now that cameron and co will come good on there promises on cracking down islamic extremists,child groomers,mass immigration,bogus aslylum seekers etc whom bring nothing but misery and upset to communitys up and down the country.
The voting process is quite clear:
Each constituency has a list of people who you can vote for, if one of the people on the list ends up with more votes than any of the others they win.
This is a reasonable approach to take, far better than the alternative which would be to vote for a party and end up with someone who ends up as your nominal MP based solely on a party list and how many seats the specific party has ‘won’.
No election process is perfect, however, the one employed in the UK is in my opinion the best of the bunch.
Not BBC bias, but has ED Balls thought of giving his fat cat parachuting “windfall” payment that he`ll be trousering for getting booted out by the great people of West Yorkshire, to a decent cause like “food banks” or an NHS hospital wing?
After all, Mrs Thatcher-that vilified hater of the NHS-gave a vast amount of her earned money to build a wing in her local Chelsea hospital?
Of course Crow died suddenly-and Benn/Miliband would have sheltered their funds to ensure the political dynasty goes on into continual failure-but Balls has plenty money having screwed us all over re expenses and second homes with his Yvette wifelet in 2009?
His money is unearned and he doesn`t need it-his wife can coin it in as per, and the poor surely need the food…the sick need those extra funds for that Labour NHS of theirs?
Or is it Maggie that does such things, whilst the hypocritical lefties pick OUR pockets for their vanity projects-whilst giving nothing themselves…the “little people do things like that”.
Tosspot!
Oh…the BBC are biased-lest Scott say it`s not fair if the BBC aren`t the story, and I blather on like this.
Surely all champagne socialists tell their accountants (if the concept of a socialist with an accountant can be countenanced in the same thought) not to worry too much about over paying a bit of tax do they? After all the government always needs money to spend on the poor, schools and hospitals.
That nice socialist former manager of a football club that plays in red is a party to an aggressive tax avoidance case . Who would have thought that possible?
It’s the same everywhere. I seem to remember that George W Bush gave about 10% of his income to charity, Obama gives next to nothing. For socialists, the people are an abstract notion; so long as they are spending £100 billion on the NHS, it does not matter if patients are dying of malnutrition or drinking water out of vases. For them, the NHS matters, the patients are a detail of history.
If it`s Fergie, then that`d be typical.
isn`t it funny?…this champagne socialist tribune of the people only answers now to SIR Alex…and the BBC luvvies and all call him so.
So much for republican tendencies from Govan Labour Club,
It`s “S`rAlex”-or no interview.
Note that bloody Bradley Wiggins is always SIR as well.
The Great God Sport allows its nomenklatura all the brown-nosing and kow-towing, that they`d despise if we did it for the Queen or Lord Fellowes or such.
Labour hypocrites?…media fawning?…so what`s new?
Only that we`ve five more years now to expunge the Left whilst we have a fair wind, and the buggers are still scraping themselves off the floor.
Oh-if only I could spare the time to listen to Womans Hour-should be a good week!
If you want a laugh please read the Toynbee creature’s article in The Guardian today.
But better still here is a post underneath her column by someone called “skinman620.” He or she nails Polly brilliantly…
“Yes Labour has failed. A once proud party died on Thursday. But Polly would also do well to examine the role of left-wing commentators like her in its demise.
She (and they) seem to forget what the Labour party is supposed to be all about: standing up for ordinary working people. Not trendy, right on working people who wonder about the political correctness of their words and their Tweets, who embrace all things equality and and spend their lives in a comfortable middle class bubble – but ordinary, imperfect people working people who need somebody to fight for them.
Not only have these people been forgotten by the party and it cheerleaders in the press, they have been pathologised by them – viewed with near contempt because they are “too thick” and “too ignorant” to understand what is proposed in their name. But it isn’t they who need to come towards the Labour Party; it is the Labour Party that needs to come to them.
I hope for the sake of democracy that this happens.”
Bullseye! Got it in one!
Well a good post, yes the working people deserve political representation. But I hope that the Tories can extend a hand to help such folk, whilst at the same time telling those who sit on their fat arses and scrounge that the game is up. No longer something for nothing provided you vote Labour.
As to the metropolitan leftist elites, and their mouth piece the BBC, they can all drown under their own verbiage for all I care. In fact I would pay to watch them struggling for breath. In fact I would pay extra for a long pole to push them under with.
The Tories do need to do something to curb the excesses of the BBC the sooner the better. After an outrageously partisan campaign coverage the corporation richly deserves its comeupance.
those who sit on their fat arses and scrounge that the game is up.
Like the pensioners?
The disabled
The single mothers
The Unemployed?
Who exactly are these people? I grant that there are a handful of them, but in any economy there will always be a number of bottom feeders who are quite honestly unemployable. The only solution would be to exterminate them, and I wonder how you would go about doing this?
What exactly would you propose to do about those lazy scrounging cancer victims sat on their fat arses because they have more than 6 months life expectancy, but have been sacked on medical grounds and are now expected to look for work?
This just isn’t the simple black & white issue the Tories have sold you to disguise a cruel policy of starving the people their fat cat friends threw on the scrap heap so they could employ cheap Eastern European labour.
If you are so easily deceived then it makes me wonder what other deceptions you have blindly swallowed?
How about the job seeking scrounger who was told to attend a training course. She was given an appointment at the Job Centre during the course and told if she didn’t attend both at the same time she would be sanctioned.
What is your solution to this dilemma? What should this lazy scrounger have done to comply ?
As it turned out this decision was overturned by a tribunal, but she still went without money for three months until the case was heard. These sanctions are now running close to a million a year. If anyone thinks that’s reasonable then they need to see a psychiatrist !
The case you mention sounds to me typical of anything which the public sector runs. It is a Kafkaesque nightmare of incompetence and indifference. Many governments have tried to reform the public sector and failed; I can only conclude that it is not possible.
Let me be devil’s advocate here. The BBC has provided an excellent graphic representation of the election results (Credit where credit is due). So we should really use it for our own analysis.
1) Ed Miliband did well. He actually increased Labour’s vote by a small margin. We can employ a sporting comparison. John Landy was a great athlete. He broke the 1 minute mile in the same race as Roger Bannister but he came in second. His problem was that he lost in Scotland and picked up none of the Lib-Dem seats.
2) UKIP did really well and increased their vote dramatically but the system worked against them.
3) In real terms the losers of this election were the Lib-Dems. They can’t blame the system for their loss of public support. They lost both seats and voters.
4) In virtual terms the big winners were the SNP who for a small increase in voters gained a huge increase in seats.
In England the voting share was the following:
Conservatives 41%
Labour 31.6%
UKIP 14.1%
66% more people voted for the Conservatives than those who voted UKIP.
The point of putting up a candidate in each constituency is to win the seat not come second or third, it is irrelevant how many votes you get if you fail to convince enough of the eligible voters in each constituency that your policies are better than the rest.
The same is obviously true on a National level, the old saying rings true ” no one remembers who came second”.
Very interesting. All election long I was looking for a poll on England alone….could not find a single one. Lot’s of Scottish polls but can’t recall ever seeing an England alone poll on the BBC or anywhere else in the leftie msm…now we can see why it doesn’t fit the narrative…
Miliband probably increase his vote by importing voters. Charlotte Church (she of the Welsh singing voice and a Millionairess) has been taking to the streets, in Cardiff, in protest of a Conservative victory. What is it with these Rabid Lefties? Are they all unhinged or what?
Just reading Fridays Guardian.
Rather thought that-given the “poll shocker” headlines-the writers in the paper would have been squauking about the triumph of the will that only socialists require.
Imagine my surprise then, that the writers were all published that expected a Labour win…and it all makes chilling reading.
For the Guardian was expecting
1. Finishing the fetish of “The Debt”
2. Instant infrastructure Big Projects-airports, HS2 etc
3. More money to Labour heartlands in the north and Scotland
4. Dealing with injustices in globalisation issues like immigration and more pay for us all.
5.Increased instant overseas aid
6. Ensuring that we head up the Paris Climate Change jamboree due in December this year.Creepy-and thank God none of this ought to happen, now that there`s no Lib Dems.
Hoping that Cameron becomes a Tory now-and if the BBC hate all he does, then he`ll be our guy!
Just thinking-Milibands promise to recognise Hamas and its Palestinian bombsite as a “country”…might that not have pissed God off, and cost Labour dearly?
Hands off Israel-or you end up like seedy Galloway!
It appears that although the Conservatives won the election apparently they didn’t. No-one voted for them and those that did were deluded and too thick to understand the issues. So on Sky tonight that idiot Christopher Hope (the so called Senior Political Correspondent of the Telegraph) put forward the theory that it was ok for protest marches against the election result because the Tories only got 30 odd percent of the vote (notice the rounding down) so didn’t really win and the electoral system is unfair and needs reform to reflect the wishes of the voters. Until the other reviewer pointed out that would mean UKIP getting a lot more seats … instant rewind and change of mind. I’m beginning to think I live in some sort of parallel universe !! As for comments I’ve seen by people purporting to be teachers on Facebook I can only say God help our kids.
The only way to get the silent majority’s views expressed on TV is to raise the funds to buy another TV channel … all the existing ones BBC, CH4, Sky have been subverted by left wing anarchists.
They keep saying the Tories were ‘wiped out’ in Scotland yet they kept the same number of seats there as before. It was Labour that was ‘wiped out’.
There are more pandas in Scotland than Labour MPs.
NB – Labour vote share increased in England – fortunately it mainly went to those areas that were already staunchly Labour.
As the dust settles
The Conservatives have won
And we have Carswell
🙂
Superb, absolutely excellent, I love the inference Carswell / ‘As well’.
Farage Flying Free
Fastidious Forager
Fabulous Fellow
Superb UKIP Haiku!
Dave’s Cast Iron Promise.
Brittle Pretenderendum?
And Our Liberty?!
The bus stopped on Clapham common
Bunny hopped on
She waved goodbye
We all went home to lashings of jam sandwiches and tea
‘ Life in a Scott’s Sitting Room Vol 2 ‘ was on the radio
We all thought it a little queer but liked the Harmonium
The bbc fell over and smashed
History marches on
Now I like this D1004!
Surreal, yet allows my spirit and mind to soar.
Plenty food for thought!
Jam sandwiches I`d say-now had they been marmalade sandwiches we`d be in Paddington Bear territory.
Did Evan Davis REALLY ask the leader of Britains third-largest party about Paddington Bear?
Or was it just a dream?…
One for our Scottish friends, and no it’s not Scott but Ivor Cutler.
Somewhere in the bbc’s vaults is a comedy show from around the time they found oil showing the English treating the Scots as though they were Saudis and the Scots behaving as them, Ivor was in it dressed in a Scottish desert outfit, quite wonderful and funny.