Who will write Lady Macbeth's speech for the count? Out damned spot. Out, out I say.

For most of the last government's period in office their spending was well within reasonable bounds. Or would you prefer it if they hadn't bothered with new school buildings, hospitals or other such projects? The big problem came in 2008 when tax revenues plummeted far more than anyone had envisaged. Of course, if they had introduced the 50p top rate of tax earlier, that might have helped to reduce the scale of the problem.

 

Not wanting to appear to support the right wing in any way, and I agree with your comments, but once upon a time a decision would have been taken to build schools and they would just have gone ahead and done it using existing staff skills, the problem with New Labour was for every million spent on school buildings another million was spent on decision-making and policy and study groups and pre-planning and four years later nothing had been built. Committees for this committees for that. The Conservatives are even worse, locally, as they spend millions on "expert outsiders" to come to the conclusion they are paying them to come to: to justify a political decision that has no basis in economic reality.

 

I've become quite cynical about politicians since I joined local government...:(

doh!

The Local election results overshadowed somewhat this more interesting by-election result.

 

Emma Lewell-Buck (Labour) 12,493 votes

Richard Elvin (UK Independence Party) 5,988 votes

Karen Allen (Conservatives) 2,857 votes

Ahmed Khan (Independent) 1,331 votes

Phil Brown (Independent Socialist Party) 750 votes

Lady Dorothy Macbeth Brookes (BNP) 711 votes

Hugh Annand (Liberal Democrats) 352 votes

Howling Laud Hope (The Official Monster Raving Loony Party) 197 votes

Thomas Faithful Darwood (Independent) 57 vote

 

Liberal Democrats lose their deposit - a sign of things to come in 2015?

The Lib Dems' performance in parliamentary byelections where they have no chance of winning has been mostly dismal and South Shields can be added to the list. The fact that the byelection was held at the same time as the county elections will have meant they spent next to nothing in South Shields with activity limited to one leaflet and little else. Their performance yesterday in areas where they have MPs was rather better. They even gained seats in some of those places.

Didn't Labour lose some of their lead this time round?

Didn't Labour lose some of their lead this time round?

Yeah, but not much. We got 52% last time and 50.4% this time - given it's quite difficult to get Labour voters to turn out in a by-election that's seemingly a foregone conclusion in a place like South Shields, that's basically fine, especially when you factor in UKIP's rise as well.