Liberal Democrat Hypocrisy
So VAT is up to 20% next year and Nick Clegg has indicated that most Liberal Democrats will vote for it.
Hat/tip: DBH
Britain’s “New Politics”: The Clameron Government
After 5 days of selling themselves to the highest bidder, the Liberal Democrats have gone to bed with Cameron’s Conservatives. Liberal Democrats across the federal executive and parliamentary group are quietly grinning that finally after almost 70 years they are back in government.
Cameron: You'll be taking John Prescott's old job
Peter Mandelson predicted “[People who] vote Lib Dem, they are making it easier for the Tories to get in”. It isn’t often I agree with Mandelson but he was spot on, those who voted for one public schoolboy, got another one free as Prime Minister. Welcome to Clegg’s definition of “New Politics”.
Nick Clegg is so nice!
Though we are impartial at TMP, we have to admit that Nick “Calamity” Clegg has done well. Before the leadership debates less than 10% of the public thought he could be prime minister. He had to plaster a picture of himself next to St Vince Cable on the Lib Dem battle bus just for Joe Public to realise which party he was in.
The national interest went that way
However since his shining performance at the first debate, his popularity skyrocketed, the media loved him, he was dubbed “the British Obama” by some hysterical elements of the liberal press, even right-wing female hacks have claimed to fancying “No more than 30 women” Nick.
David Cameron is impressive
Gawd bless Dave.
His starting election speech back in April was filled with inspirational references from JFK to Barack Obama, he asked the Great British public to join him in the next UK government. Beaming with pride, he presented an expensive looking hardback manifesto showing that this was a “serious” party for Britain. The polls in April were showing a decisive Conservative victory, “Vote for Change”, he said, and they did. The problem is it wasn’t the change he wanted.
For the first time since 1974, Britain has a “hung parliament“. Dave warned us that his friends in the financial markets may give Britain a bad rating if the public didn’t do or know what was good for them.
GE2010 Spotlight: Asylum & Immigration Policies
As part of The Multicultural Politic‘s coverage on the General Election, we will be reviewing the parties’ manifesto pledges and policy of particular interest, we start by looking at the important and emotive topic of immigration and making our own case for a different policy direction.
What is striking about the mainstream parties (the so-called Big Three) Asylum and Immigration Policies is that there is a lot of consensus. The choice on immigration is limited to the question of having an reformed, stricter and “final” undocumented workers’ amnesty law or not, having an immigration cap administered by an absolute number or by a points system (including a regional one). The issue of the real need for ageing Britain to have more immigrants is completely ignored, this sends the message that more immigration (particularly African and Asian economic migrants) is bad for Britain. Immigration needs to be talked about a lot more, especially evidence based arguments as opposed to the usual appealing to emotion and xenophobia.
Clegg Academy Visit Cancelled By Strike
Crest Academy Teachers on Strike
The overwhelming majority of teaching staff at Crest Boys Academy were on strike to on Wednesday, 21st April. A planned visit to the school by Nick Clegg was cancelled. The strike was taking place because E-Act (previously Edutrust) are making staff redundant despite recent reports of their Chief Executive, Sir Bruce Liddington, having a salary and bonuses approaching £300 000 per year and also lavish expenditure by top executives on luxury £300+ suites in hotels, mini-bar tabs and £250 pound taxi rides – all at taxpayer’s expense. Lord Bhatia, Chair of Trustees of E-Act, in its previous incarnation as Edutrust, resigned after allegations of financial irregularities.
Hank Roberts, Brent ATL and NUT Secretary said “They changed their name, replaced their top person and carry on as before. It reminds me of a dodgy firm on Watchdog. Surely an enquiry should be held into their finances.”
![Recommend [justinthelibsoc]](http://s3.amazonaws.com/arkayne-media/img/badge/logo-recommend-badge-medium.png){kind=icon}
‘Knocking seven bells out of each other…’
By Majeed Neky
Having stood in the recent local elections and still catching up on sleep, I’ve spent more of my last few weeks than I’d have liked defending the coalition (a colleague even suggested that I allocate ten minutes for general abuse about the actions of ‘my’ government at the start of each day, just to get it out of the way). My arguments have been pretty similar to those already aired here. ‘New politics’ it is not, certainly not from my perspective. Having defended the government to people on the left, the right and the centre with equally little success, it doesn’t feel like Punch and Judy politics has ended – just that the Lib Dems have been inserted into the middle like the traditional string of sausages.
My petty troubles aside, the inevitable cracks in policy and, it seems, equally inevitable scandals shouldn’t distract us from a deeper point about the way that politics is conducted. This is something that I’ve been thinking about for a while, as some of my previous posts at http://whorunskingston.wordpress.com will evidence, but it came back to me sharply after last week’s Thirsk and Malton parliamentary election. With the Conservative win there a fairly foregone conclusion, press interest centred on the adversarial campaigning of the coalition partners, with Radio 4’s Evan Davis asking ‘How can they be knocking seven bells out of each other one day and then go back and be loving each other again in Cabinet?’
Why is this more than just a tricky operational problem that will interest electoral anoraks of the future? Because the answer is quite simple: the people doing the seven-bells-knocking aren’t the same people who are in the Cabinet. Granted, this is pretty obvious – but the coalition arrangement has thrown the disconnect between the professionalised political classes and the interested amateurs into sharp relief, and it’s not a problem that’s going to go away under a majority government.
Read more