Danny

Andrea easily has the best potential vocally, and he's so good when he's restraining himself a bit like he was for the first minute or so of this performance. But he's unbearable when he goes OTT.

Union J will be one of them I bet.

Actually yeah, I think the James vs Jahmene outcome was in doubt. Come to think of it, I think some people were even fearing Chris Maloney might win(!!!!) because there'd been leaks about how he was topping the voting. Let us always remember that as a reminder that, no matter how far X Factor has sunk, it could've been even worse.

Yeah, I agree with that. I wouldn't be shocked at all if Ben won because I wouldn't be surprised if he picked up more of the "casual" fans' votes that come in the final. It's good that there's finally an unpredictable final anyway, I can't remember the last time the outcome was remotely in doubt (did people maybe think Rebecca Ferguson had a chance of beating Matt Cardle in 2010?).

RIP Scottish Labour party.

Actually, this is one area where there's a ray of hope -- quite a few of the new Labour candidates are councillors, including the one for my constituency. That's the one reason any part of me still thinks a Labour victory is at all worth it, because there will hopefully be enough backbench Labour MPs who will have seen through the impact of the last 5 years that cuts aren't just some academic exercise that have no consequences.

Not really -- it's possible for one person to have a more aggressive type of cancer than another person, but for both to die in the end. Especially since local government in many northern towns are already on life support even before they've started this new round of cuts that they're both promising.

Russell Brand and Nigel Farage on now. Underwhelming so far tbh.

Caroline Lucas and some SNP guy who's name I forgot were on Newsnight the other day, and both said they were against further spending cuts.

"Take public services back just 70 years rather than 90 years. Vote Labour!"

Is this supposed to be a significant difference? The point about comparing it to the 2010 election is splitting hairs about specific numbers or percentages means nothing to people. All that the public will hear is that Labour are joining the Tories and Lib Dems in saying there needs to be more significant cuts, while on the other side the Greens and the SNP will be saying there's no need for cuts, and UKIP will be saying the deficit can be cut solely through cutting immigration and foreign aid while leaving all "ordinary people"'s services alone. Who exactly is Labour going to appeal to in such a scenario?

So basically, it's going to be an exact re-run of the 2010 campaign: the most microscopic of differences between the parties (yet bizarrely the leaders still vitriolically attacking eachother in spite of so few differences--giving the opening for Clegg's most powerful line of his otherwise overrated debates performance "the more they attack eachother, the more they sound exactly the same"), leading to public apathy and/or disgust. Why Labour would expect the same strategy as an election they lost to somehow lead to a different result is beyond me. And also beyond me is why they think that, for the 60% of people who want no more austerity, a stance of "massive cuts but marginally less terrible than the Tories'" is going to be good enough when there's a variety of other non-Tory parties on offer.

That article says EdBalls has said all departments bar the NHS will have their spending cut until the books are balanced.

In his latest ingenious political strategy, Ed is going to endorse Tory policies while simultaneously opposing the inevitable consequences of such policies: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/...ding-line-state

Erm...yes. :lol: That's not exactly a surprise. Though I highly doubt that most Labour politicians privately feel it really matters whether the deficit is reduced or not.

The deficit is not especially high by historic standards, as a % of GDP. There's absolutely nothing wrong with running a modest deficit, in itself. The problems come with the "dynamics", by which I mean either that it's increasing rapidly - even I would draw the line at the next government massively increasing spending and letting the deficit grow at something like 50% a year, but keeping it broadly at the current level would be fine; or that the demographics of a country mean the debt burden is unsustainable, for example Japan where their population is getting on average "older" at such a rapid pace that they just can't keep up with the increased demands on their health and pensions systems with so relatively few healthy, working-age people contributing, so that the gap between public spending and the tax take rapidly widens even without "discretionary spending" being increased. That doesn't apply to the UK. Even taking the deficit-hysterics on on their own terms, "the markets" will not care one jot about whether we keep the deficit at the same modest level that it currently is, as shown by the fact that RIGHT NOW they can't buy our government bonds quickly enough. That's even leaving aside whether it's even desirable to make satisfying "the markets" the top priority even if they had a different view ("putting the people of Britain before random, faceless investors in Shanghai" as any halfway-competent left-wing populist would put it).

Yeah, I'm now hoping for a hung, completely gridlocked Parliament (which a large SNP contingent would probably bring about) where spending cuts are literally unable to be passed.

SNP spokesman on Newsnight saying they would demand an end to spending cuts (and Trident) as the price for a coalition with Labour.

Surely the older audience has always dominated X Factor voting? I mean, take the two most successful years 2009 and 2010, even if Joe McElderrey and Matt Cardle were technically in the Boys category, their main support surely came from the mums and grannies (well, maybe Matt Cardle got a few teenage girls' votes). If anything I would say Fleur despite being an "Over" appeals more to the young audience than a lot of the people who've got to the final in recent years.

The 60% isn't from this poll, it's from the Lord Ashcroft poll I've quoted before from a few months ago, in which 40% said they thought more austerity was necessary and the rest said either that no austerity was EVER needed, or that it was once needed but not anymore. And even if I am stretching these polling results for all they're worth, I'm putting far less cheeky spin on it than your attempts to spin these results into an endorsement of deficit hysteria! And it's certainly untenable to continue to claim that it's in Labour's political interests to posture about being willing to cut spending, despite it being one of the Progress Tendency's shibboleths.

Cowell stretching it out for all it's worth to fill the last 8 minutes.

Yup. He has such a nice voice when he's singing "softly" (thinking of the beginning of 'Chandelier' especially) but I cant bear him when he's going OTT like that. That said, Lauren is even more dire.

Which still goes against the wishes of the 80% who say they don't want the deficit reduced mainly through cuts, or the 60% who point-blank say they don't want any further cuts at all.

Correct me if I'm wrong (which I might be since they're constantly contradicting themselves), but they've been saying it needs to be cut mainly through spending cuts, and that in total spending will be cut substantially. A stance that only 20% of the public agree with.