The last few days have been way better than the first week, but I don't get the sense that anybody's particularly 'won' the last couple of days to be honest. I do think we'd have lost the campaign in about an hour if we'd just gone out and promised the world without a single way of saying how we'd pay for it - we can't get away with that the way the Tories can.

You what? If anything people have lost faith in politicians overpromising and underdelivering. Actually showing how you're going to bring about the change you're promising by saying how you'll pay for it is always worth more than just sounding off like some Green Party freak promising the moon with no idea or plan for how to get there.

 

There's truth in both positions Cameron believes the hype that people believe the Tories are good at steering the economy so he thinks he can go forward with massive promises not funded beforehand.

 

But also it's true that people don't trust politicsns.

 

It's clear that being stuck at 30% has meant both main parties have to branch out to others so Tories have morphed into the party of working people whereas labour is all of a sudden prudent in a Ramsay Macdonaldesque Labour Party way.

 

I wonky wish newspapers would scrutinise the Tories the way they do for labour!

There's truth in both positions Cameron believes the hype that people believe the Tories are good at steering the economy so he thinks he can go forward with massive promises not funded beforehand.

 

But also it's true that people don't trust politicsns.

 

It's clear that being stuck at 30% has meant both main parties have to branch out to others so Tories have morphed into the party of working people whereas labour is all of a sudden prudent in a Ramsay Macdonaldesque Labour Party way.

 

I only wish newspapers would scrutinise the Tories the way they do for labour!

There's not much chance of that. Of course, the Tories know it and act accordingly.

My wife pays full taxes unlike all these Eastern European immigrants on benefits and taking council houses.

 

The council house waiting list round here is 10 years, those with children get priority and the taxpayer pays private property-owners huge sums of money for them to live there because there aren't enough council houses. This of course means the taxpayer supports the private sector instead of recycling the money within local government, is hugely expensive, and helps keeps the rich rich and the poor poor. Oh and it's more expensive. Most immigrants don't qualify to jump to the top of the housing waiting list, and the ones I know of locally tend to live in one-bed slums, or rent a bedroom, or even sleep 2 or 3 to a room on mattresses on the floor - I know, I once spent a night on a mattress with Brazilian (non-EU) students/workers before they got forced to go home. Non-EU admittedly, but most of them work in low-paid jobs, and there's essentially no difference between someone who works and pays tax in a well-paid job, and someone who works in low-paid jobs when both are not born in the country and are here legally. Nor is it any different for all the British people working abroad in the holiday industry in sunnier climes. They are there legally, and pay taxes to the country they work in.

Has anyone here actually ever been phoned by one of the polling organisations? My terminally ill mum, 89, was rung by Populus last week whilst I was up there and asked whom she planned to vote for and she told him to mind his own business!! Didn't think they bothered with rock solid safe seats like Barnsley Central!

There's not much chance of that. Of course, the Tories know it and act accordingly.

 

Indeed and the privately educated media moguls in turn benefit from Tory policies!

Has anyone here actually ever been phoned by one of the polling organisations? My terminally ill mum, 89, was rung by Populus last week whilst I was up there and asked whom she planned to vote for and she told him to mind his own business!! Didn't think they bothered with rock solid safe seats like Barnsley Central!

 

I had a guy from Ipsos-Mori come to the door last year in the run up to the European elections to poll me about my feeling about the elections. I'd asked him why they do it door-to-door instead of over the phone/internet, and he said that it's because he feels that they get more accurate results that way. I would dispute that, but then again, they're the professionals.

Has anyone here actually ever been phoned by one of the polling organisations? My terminally ill mum, 89, was rung by Populus last week whilst I was up there and asked whom she planned to vote for and she told him to mind his own business!! Didn't think they bothered with rock solid safe seats like Barnsley Central!

They select people at random, regardless of constituency. They then adjust their figures to allow for the discrepancy between a random sample and a truly representative sample. Obviously, nobody would bother doing a constituency poll in Barnsley Central, any more than they would do one in Witney.

I had a guy from Ipsos-Mori come to the door last year in the run up to the European elections to poll me about my feeling about the elections. I'd asked him why they do it door-to-door instead of over the phone/internet, and he said that it's because he feels that they get more accurate results that way. I would dispute that, but then again, they're the professionals.

Face-to-face polls used to be the norm. However, there has been a gradual move towards phone and internet polling. All methods have their merits and their flaws. For example, the relative anonymity of an internet poll may mean respondents are more honest.

There's been hardly any.

 

I feel like the manifestos the last couple of days will be seen as the turning point of the election. Labour just completely miscalculated: people don't want "credibility", they want HOPE that things are going to get better, and on that score the Tories are now getting the upper-hand (irrespective of whether they'll actually follow through on their promises). People don't want to hear nitpicking about how "realistic" or "costed" things are, they WANT to believe things are going to get better and so will take anything that politicians say at this point pretty much at face value.

 

 

So you wouldnt say this manifesto is Labours most radical in a generation then?

Apparently 'radical' had its definition changed to 'increase spending loads' (which doesn't strike me as especially radical a solution in and of itself, but there we go), so apparently not.

Apparently 'radical' had its definition changed to 'increase spending loads' (which doesn't strike me as especially radical a solution in and of itself, but there we go), so apparently not.

 

You're right, the real definition of socialism is "cut away the safety net for the poor even more when it's already in tatters".

Who said the cuts would be to the safety net?

There's an interesting thread on Digital Spy asking whether the general public really care or are interested in the deficit. I doubt most of the electorate gives a toss about it and whether we bring it down, halve it or leave it as it is as it doesn't affect them personally! I certainly don't care about it yet politicians are going on and on about it this election. Voters surely care far more about how much tax they're paying and how much they have in their pay packet every month and the state of schools and the NHS.

Edited April 15, 201510 yr by Common Sense

They might not care now. They probably will care the next time we hit a recession and can't borrow as much as we need for a proper stimulus to stop ordinary people being hit worst by a downturn.

That would require the current shower of morons to be replaced by those who rightly believe that stimulus trumps austerity.

 

The deficit does matter, but not as much as the Tories or the LNP would have you believe. It depends on why you're running a deficit. If you're struggling to cover the basics like pensions, welfare, NHS, teachers salaries et al then we're in hot water. But if you're running a deficit to invest in capital infrastructure and generally investing in growth then actually it's a good thing because in the long run you generate greater returns.

 

Currently it is very cheap for the UK Government to borrow, so the smart plan is the SNP's. I'm not just saying this as a member. Moderate increases in spending, investment in growth and job creation while ensuring that the government is operating efficiently and effectively will pay greater dividends than an ideological drive to have a budget surplus that has destroyed public services and done shit all to help the economy.

"Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may make you feel like you're flying high at first, but it won't take long before you feel the impact."

 

Said not by a raving "TUSCite", but by the president of the socialist hotbed that is the US. The country which has even lower borrowing rates despite not giving a crap about the deficit.

Edited April 15, 201510 yr by Danny

"Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may make you feel like you're flying high at first, but it won't take long before you feel the impact."

 

Said not by a raving "TUSCite", but by the president of the socialist hotbed that is the US. The country which has even lower borrowing rates despite not giving a crap about the deficit.

Which is why Labour have ringfenced education spending and said that investment borrowing wouldn't be included in their deficit calculations.

 

And it's not about rates, it's about how much you can actually realistically borrow at those rates if a crisis hits - if you're going to borrow for a proper stimulus, you'll be borrowing amounts that would almost certainly command higher rates or just be refused outright compared to typical borrowing rates, especially if you haven't stabilised your deficit from the last recession. Not that it's that hard to have low borrowing rates when you have the world's reserve currency.

That would require the current shower of morons to be replaced by those who rightly believe that stimulus trumps austerity.

Dunno if you'd guessed, but I'm kind of campaigning for that at the moment.

Which is why Labour have ringfenced education spending and said that investment borrowing wouldn't be included in their deficit calculations.

 

The same principle applies to health and welfare, and all the local government funding which indirectly goes into those areas. Though again, I can see we've hit into the ironic definition of "economic credibility" where you can make masses of cuts without somehow affecting anything that matters, all with magical "reforms" no doubt.

Edited April 15, 201510 yr by Danny