Will there be a pre-election Budget?
March 6th, 2010
Is there no date because they can’t agree the contents?
Last year’s budget was delivered on 22 April, the latest ‘regular’ budget since they reverted to their traditional Spring slot. That date was announced on 12 February. More than three weeks beyond the equivalent date this year, there has been no announcement as to when the budget will be delivered. What’s going on?
The timing of the budget is intimately connected to the timing of the General Election: as parliament has to be sitting, it must be delivered at least three and a half weeks before the election - or after it. Knowing when the budget will be therefore allows us - and opposition parties - to rule out various dates as election possibilities and that may be behind the delay in the announcement.
However, if the Easter recess (yet to be set) is one week either side of the Easter weekend as last year, that would make 24 March the last Wednesday before the recess and 14 April the first afterwards - too late for a dissolution in time for a May 6 election.
In other words, if the Budget is not in the next three weeks, either the election will not be on May 6 or there will not be a pre-election budget.
It is true that parliament could sit for a day on April 12 but what would the point of that be? The date would flag up so obviously what was going on that it might as well be held before the recess without the need to drag all the Labour MP’s back to Westminster, which the government whips would have to do in case they otherwise got ambushed and lost a vote.
There is another possibility: that the reason there’s been no announcement of a date is because there’s no agreement on the contents. The government has a choice of rowing back on last year’s plans to heavily restrict growth in spending or going into the election with a launch pad of spending cuts and tax rises. On a loftier intellectual level, there may well also be disagreement between Numbers Ten and Eleven about whether the scale of the deficit or the fragility of the recovery poses the greater economic threat and therefore should have priority.
One way out of that impasse may be to hold the election first. Even a May 6 election would only be two weeks after the date of last year’s budget but April would also be back into play as an option - something it can‘t realistically be if a March budget is announced. The more tricky problem to finesse would be dealing with the other parties’ claims - and potentially the markets’ fears - as to what Labour might be hiding.
To delay the budget until after the election would be an audacious strategy - or an accidental one. Either way, it would be interesting to see a betting market on which will be first, the budget or the election. The budget should still be favourite but not by all that much.
David Herdson
MessageSpace Advertising
1st
Thats right folks, no budget, no election, no nuffink, everything’s been cancelled. Easter, Christmas, Summer Holidays, World Cup, you name it, its all been indefinitely postponed until Labour are 20 points ahead in the polls.
However i did hear that Downing Street have ordered 500 planks of fresh timber and 10,000 6 inch nails ready for the barricade. Plus a 2 months supply of food, fresh water, 50 Armalites, 20 RPG’s
100,000 rounds of ammunition, and 6 spare pairs of pyjamas ready for the month long siege.
Gordon will not leave Downing Street without a fight.
There better bloody had be!
Possibility 3 is that Brown and Darling have been lying about the economy.
We know revenues to the end of January were down on previous year by about £40 billion, and that Darling had projected revenues to be the same as the previous year. We also know that there have been spending overruns on projected spending but we don’t know how big exactly or what they consist of.
And yet the government insists on claiming their £178 billion (12.5% GDP) borrowing requirement is on track.
Osborne is saying he will appoint an independent auditor to work out the true state of Britain’s finances once in power, which is political speak for ‘these bastards are lying bastards’.
They will prefer this particular can of worms to remain closed. If the international markets twig what is happening, the Pound will be heading south again to new lows below $1.35 and Euro parity, and the Stock market rally being fed by QE, i.e. printed money, will be over. Cameron is as good as PM.
O/T:
In 1997, 183 Labour MPs were elected for the first time - (43.7% of the total of 419).
This is what has happened to them so far:
Defeated or retired in 2001: 8 (4.4%)
Defeated or retired in 2005: 44 (24.0%)
Not standing in 2010: 41* (22.4%)
Standing again in 2010: 90 (49.2%)
(*includes Ian Gibson and David Taylor).
Well as far as i can see it there is only the possibility of March 24 for a pre election budet even then there has to be time to debate it and get the measures passed which makes me think more and more that April 8th or 15th will be election day, so sometime over the next two weeks Gordon will need to go to the palace. Also the lack of easter recess dates are a big clue it is less than 3 weeks away and no date announced, this also makes Tory voters may be away and not bother to vote, this could make all the difference in tight marginals.
In terms of budget date…
Someone else may have said this before, but I think there needs to be some technical finance bill before a certain date to allow the lawful gathering of income tax - even if there is no budget. Maybe the preannouncment of changes years in advance has obviated this but I’m not sure.
At the end of March is the final revision of GDP for Q4. Should this show a negative revision into recession it is bad news for team brown as UK will never have left recession. And this will be big news whatever the labour grid try to spin to the media.
it’s really too bad tim is “away,”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7052010.ece
Carol Vorderman, a great mind of our time!
With PFI not included in the official figures it is a fudge anyway.
Will the Treasury even publish those details, somehow I doubt it.
If even that is not enough to make a dodgy budget they are in trouble.
After Greece, the EU wants the figures to at least resemble reality.
That may be impossible, best to deny as usual and hope nobody digs for information. And why not say it is unopatriotic to talk the economy down, i.e discuss what the true position really is.
Oh, they are doing that already?, well that is the last line of defence for massaged results and it is very shaky indeed.
It will be hard to achieve a budget that does not show enormous cuts if revenues are down as much as they appear to be.
Lots of public servant jobs would be lost, Labour’s key working supporters, who felt they had a job for life whereas unlike those pesky tories would feel the need to balance the books.
Thank goodness for North Sea Oil revenues being added to the figures or the game would be over.
I said 6 months ago on this site consumer confidence is massaged by the media and if the real outcome was known then a visit to the IMF a la Heley was not only a possibility but a necessity.
With 5% plus spent on wars and defence compared to much less for most countries in europe, the days of the empire seem gone. Particulalrly as the reason we are fighting is tied up with a country that as the Falklands shows values the votes of new Hispanic voters above any special relationship britain ever had.
I see no reason to amend that assessment.
The reasons that the Americans are in Guam are not disimilar to the reasons the British are in the Falklands. Having been there frequently, and heard how many local people want the Americans to leave, (except those who work at the base of course) then I think they should be very careful about using geography as a reason that people cannot be associated without another country far away.
8 - I learnt most of the Kings and Queens when I was about 10 years old - not deliberately but by accident as I was reading books on British history in general. The problem was other kids didn’t believe me when I told them this: they thought I’d spent many hours, days and months desperately trying to learn them in a bloody-minded way just for the sake of it in order to impress them, and were therefore careful to remain very unimpressed! After a while I used to pretend that I didn’t know them for a quiet life.
Yes, of course there will be a budget.
Darling has repeated it so often that he will look like the most stupid person alive if there isn’t.
10 - My mother taught me the following rhyme when I was about 6 for remembering 400 years worth of kings.
Willy, Willy, Harry, Steve, Harry, Dick, John, Harry 3.
1, 2, 3 Neds, Richard 2, Henry 4, 5, 6 then who?
On the subject of the budget, I’m with wibbler. There will be a budget, it will be as truthful as circumstances allow and the markets will not immediately take fright.
They say that all Chancellors of the Exchequer are bishops or bookies. The last Tory Chancellor, Ken Clarke, was a bishop who looked like a bookie. We better all pray that Alistair Darling isn’t a bookie who looks like a bishop.
No Idea
But maybe not if they have to mentione this information from Guidos site
This week’s Guy News interviews Sam Dunkerley, a pensioner who worked at an engineering firm taken over by Gordon’s non-domiciled financial backer, Lord Swarj Paul. Emily reports on what happened to the firm’s pension fund and how bitter Mr Dunkerley feels about Lord Paul’s donations to the Labour Party: “Lord Paul has been bank-rolling the Labour Party with our money”.
The stench of hypocriscy reeks! does it not? Come on State Broadcaster you know you want too sadly though this is not a Tory member or a Tory doing it.
No doubt the Labour machine will now crank up and point out this gentleman was in fact in his past life a Nazi war, drugs baron , warlord and gangmaster running a string of escort agencies and private nursing homes while genetically modifying baby milk and just to make ends meet ‘has a part time vocation at the weekend of executioner of unwanted kittens and puppies.
(Or maybe Tim. BenM and Gabble etc will do it for them)
Stuff the budget! Bring on the election
I said 6 months ago on this site consumer confidence is massaged by the media and if the real outcome was known then a visit to the IMF a la Heley was not only a possibility but a necessity.
by redcliffe62 March 6th, 2010 at 6:06 am
Well noted Redcliffe but the EU has not balanced its books for over a decade and no auditor will sign off teh accounts. It just beggars bekief and I see a ginormous crash happening ehrn the sheeple wake up and realise LABOUR LIES. They have always lied and despite hammering the Tories for slick PR that is the only thing Labour have done well.
Whoever votes Labour and I am sorry to have to say this but I really hope you lose your job, your house, your sofa and your widescreen. No doubt then you will blame the Tories.
Either way by putting a cross in the labour box you absolutely deserve everything coming your way and condem those that really don’t deserve it to a similar fate.
12…then who?
Are we allowed to google?
(ahem! as my daughter always says when I pose a difficult question)
OT, as somebody who make educational technology for a living, it’s great to see Gove ditching all that trendy namby-pamby nonsense about learning things in context so that they actually mean something, and going back to proper traditional rote-memorization based on what should be the key test here - namely:
What was really cheap to make exams for in the 18th and 19th Century?
The reason why this is so great is that teaching declarative knowledge - memorized poems and lists of dates and things - is something that a computer can do incredibly well. Much better than a teacher, in fact. The same things that made it easy to test cheaply on a large scale make it easy to teach well with a computer. Gove wants kids in sets so they learn at the right pace, but we can teach them even better individually.
I’m guessing the Tories are going to be big on exams and between-school competition as well, so the technology’s going to beat the pants off the humans, and everyone’s going to know it. Don’t know if David Roe is still thinking about going into teaching, but he should probably reconsider.
1980s coalminers = 2010s schoolteachers
Batch File, I have since seen a longer version that covers all kings and queen up to Her Majesty, but it’s nowhere near as pleasing as the short one given above, which has a real jingle.
I’m not a fan of Gradgrind learning, and in the internet age, knowledge of facts for their own sake is less useful than ever. That said, you need to be able to grasp how facts interrelate so that the concepts being taught make sense. When I was not much younger than the time I was taught that rhyme, I remember being really surprised that my dad had never seen dinosaurs. That simple rhyme at least helped to teach me that the past didn’t all happen together.
An excellent post David. I think a GE close to Easter looks likely now. When would be the latest date for a budget be for this Parliament? For example, if they were aiming for a June 3 GE? What a horrible thought.
N-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-nineteen?
Cameron’s going “bold and radical” : for “a whole new type of government”.
Speaking to the Welsh Conservative conference in Llandudno, Mr Cameron will insist that Tory plans for swift reductions in the state deficit do not contradict his ambition to reform public services and tackle social ills.
…he aims to “make things better without just spending money”, and will deliver “bold” reform by stripping away Labour bureaucracy and giving more decision-making power to local communities and frontline public servants.
…Mr Cameron will highlight plans to publish every item of government expenditure over £25,000 online as an example of how the Conservatives will crack down on wasteful spending.
“It will mean an army of armchair auditors will be crawling all over the books, scrutinising them and acting as a straitjacket on wasteful spending,” he will say.
“It will mean the minister who lazily signs off a monster contract without checking if he could get it cheaper will be caught out and will have to answer for himself.”
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5gf985_M_Yvs65vERqSlSqsOPo5tw
A number of Cabinet members including Ed Balls and the SoS for Defence (cant remember his name) have said that it will be May 6th - Did they do that under orders to lull the Tories into thinking that an early election was not going to happen.
17
I was given a book by my parents called “Reign by Reign”. It had all the Kings and Queens with a bit about each of them. I can remember most of the sequencing of the dates, but not necessarily who was on the throne at the time, particularly the early period.. then again the last time I looked at it was 45 yrs ago.
Great article David.
Anyone know what is the minimum notice period for a Budget that the Govt can get away with?
Should you bet on or against Obamacare to be passed before July — at evens?
Will Pelosi get the 216 votes she needs?
Jay Cost is counting and updating…
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/horseraceblog/2010/03/counting_the_heads_of_house_de.html
Weds left to meet the May 6th if David is right in his article leave us with just.
Next weds 10th = surely too close?
17th
24th.
Time is running out and if there is no legal minimum notice anything less than 1 week’s notice will look rushed and draw a lot of attacks. Which leaves us with 17th as the last day to announce a budget and still have a May 6th election?
18- According to Wiki, Parliament expires at Midnight on the 10th of May, so any budget happens at that point
16 @ Edmund in Tokyo.
I agree with you to an extent - UK education especially in my field of history is a mess - students dont learn hard facts and knowledge that they need and are consistently told - there is no ‘right’ answer. This is bollox. Moreover the ‘everyone gets a prize’ culture dumbs down and restricts the most able. This is why i dont teach in the UK and am now looking over the pacific ocean and hearing the waves crash on the unpleasant Lima beach.
However a good teacher will always be needed to help students navigate the difficult waters of knowledge. As an actual historian - you’d be surprised how many ‘history teachers’ in the UK are not - i can use that expertise to help students make links that arent readily available via a computer - and help then understand those which are.
Us older folk have the advantage of experience in understanding ‘between the lines’ messages which again students and computer (yet!) dont have.
26- Sorry, any budget has to happen before that point
Hat tip Susie at Guido
353Susie says:
March 6, 2010 at 12:36 am
Liked this comment from the Times (which incidentally is joining the Telegraph headlining with defence chiefs calling Brown a liar).
“What Gordon Brown said amounted to this. The Generals sat on the hands while the funds were available all the time, and watched their troops got blown to pieces one by one.
Do you believe that?
Are you going to vote for the man who made that accusation against the armed forces?
Hung parliament? No, a military coup more likely. They hate his guts.
Couple of questions which may throw some doubt on the calculations being made:
A. Does the Budget have to be on a Wednesday? I’m not certain, but I’m sure this is just a convention.
B Does there have to be a recess, or at least a two week one as you’re postulating? Again I suspect this is flexible.
17 Antifrank
Please dont take me wrong I was actually supporting you. The fact is you like me learnt these things by this method hence I somehow still remember BODMAS in mathamatics.
Its sad that such things are no longer used. One of the best ones I learnt in my specific career discipline was the way to do a caluclation which depending on the information required sometimes had to be reversed( wont bore you with details) anyway the first way was
CDMVT which we were always taught to remember the sequence as “Cadburys Dairy Milk Very Tasty”
In reverse of course its TVMDC which we were always taught to remember as…..
“True Virgins Make Dull Company”
”
Told only once 35 years ago, never ever forgotten either to this day
However, if the Easter recess (yet to be set) is one week either side of the Easter weekend as last year, that would make 24 March the last Wednesday before the recess and 14 April the first afterwards - too late for a dissolution in time for a May 6 election.
It is true that parliament could sit for a day on April 12 but what would the point of that be?
As I understand it Parliament doesn’t have to be sitting in order for dissolution to occur, so surely the time of the Easter recess is irrelevant:
Dissolution of Parliament is a prerogative act and may occur at any time; Parliament does not need to be sitting, or to be recalled, for the purpose of dissolution.
http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/briefings/snpc-05085.pdf
31- I think the reason that it’s sitting in the article is to have the budget, rather that to dissolve
David, a slight correction to your valuable article: if a 24th March Budget date were to be announced on Monday, it would be a little over two weeks before the event, not three.
Astonished to learn that even the dates of the Easter recess have yet to be fixed.
Although it’s tempting to see this as a big plan of Gordon Brown’s, leading to an election on 8th or 15th April, I fear the truth is that he’s simply not got round to considering these issues. After all, he thinks he’s surrounded by idiots, and he has to do everything himself…
32
so we get another proper budget 3 weeks later rather than the ‘Alice In wonderland’ performance that will come from the present government.
23 - don’t know about a minimum period, but if you look at the last nine years, the announcement of the date has been 21, 62, 35, 47, 21, 34, 27, 41 and 69 days in advance. (The years with 21 days’ notice were 2001 and 2005, election years.)
An announcement on Monday of a 24 March budget would be 16 days notice. At some point, it gets a bit unreasonable to ask the media, accountancy firms, etc., to gear up for their coverage with just a few days notice.
Philippe Magnan @24
I reckon it’s more likely to pass than not, but there will be a lot of brinksmanship on the way there. Maybe worth selling at a little bit over 50%, if you can get that, then going back in right before the vote when everyone’s pretending they’re going to vote “no” in the hope of getting something in exchange for flipping to a “yes”?
BTW, I’m not a big fan of the anti-Obama conspiracy theories, but I thought the timing of the no-voting Eric Massa suddenly having to resign under suspicion of sexually harassing a male staff member was interesting - and right after that, Rachel Maddow goes to town on Stupak, accusing him of covering up payment-in-kind in the form of subsidized rent at his K-Street house:
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2010/03/05/rachel-maddow-is-shrill/
If I was a no-voting Democrat I’d be getting a little bit nervous right now…
33 John its possibly that but more likely the plan of action is
“keep your opponent guessing’
Remember any plan only survives as long as first contact with the ememy (Tht’s in every walk of life by the way not just military) but even more so in Politics.
35 - Do you really think they care about that?
35 - Do you really think they care about that?
32. I see, (sorry it’s too early for me on a Saturday morning), David’s suggestion is one possibility could be to have the budget and dissolution on the same day? (12th being dissolution day for 6th May election)
Good article by David but I do wonder if it is neither of the reasons he gives and we are seeing what has become a fairly common phenomena within the Labour Party repeating itself. It’s simply that they are dithering over it. Given the fragility of the economy I imagine there is plenty of doubt about what to do next kicking around Downing Street and the Treasury. Labour may be managing a tighter PR ship these days but it doesn’t change our precarious economic situation. It could just be dither.
Of course usually when Labour dither they make the wrong decision….
38 xenon - probably not, but the lack of consideration for the needs of the non-Westminster world seems extraordinary to me - and reinforces the points David makes in his article.
41 what worries me is that they have dithered and made the wrong decision so often eventually they may make the right one!
Budget: I suspect David Herdson is right that there is disagreement about the economics. I fear Darling is on the wrong side, and that Chancellor Balls would have done more to boost recovery.
Education: the irony is that maths and history were not so much dumbed down as up. In both cases the boffins thought the subjects should be brought more into line with what is taught at university level.
A lax budget, or a fudge budget will frighten the markets, and favour the Conservatives. A tough budget will appear as a U-turn and will also favour the Conservatives, by supporting their argument.
A non-budget, or a let’s wait and see budget, could be the most likely option. Egg on Darling’s face possibly isn’t an issue, because he’s probably toast anyway.
Brown’s ambition will to force the Conservatives into fleshing out their exact plans and hopefully frighten the horses.
The Conservatives would be foolish to say anything, because they currently hold the upper hand. Instead, they can simply argue that they firstly need to see the books.
Similarities could be drawn with the post boom 1964 election when Reginald Maudling handed over No 11 Downing Street to Jim Callaghan with the words “sorry about the mess old c*ck!”
42 - I wonder what happens if the markets suspect that no budget will be unveiled? At what point is it worth piling into a June 3rd election date?
It seems to me that if you are from the UK you should just be expected to know the kings and queens we have had, as well as our Prime Ministers and the key dates in our history. I cannot believe there is not a way to teach that to kids that is interesting and engaging. In my experience kids are always fascinated by the past. And, boy, do we have one.
That said, I went to primary school in the late 60s and early 70s, and then on to grammar school, and we never learned these things by rote then. I just acquired the knowledge because we were mainly taught British hisory. Subjects such as Stalin, the Nazis and so on are clearly important, but kids should learn about them after they have learned about the place where they live first.
And I would also throw in a requirement that kids should learn about the UK from a geographical perspective as well - our big cities, major rivers, constituent parts, ports, exports, imports etc etc.
In short, teach kids about where they are from. And if they live here, whatever their ethnic origin, they are from the UK. It is only when you have a firm grasp of this that you can really start looking a the rest of the world.
Ideally, I would love to see this done across the whole country, but I do understand there are going to be issues and nuances in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales - which is why education has to be a devolved subject. But even if you are nationalist, surely you are better armed to make your case and argue your corner if you are armed with some basic knowledge about the status quo you want to change.
Announcement this week and a budget on the 24th would be my guess
Antifrank - Darling will be an Archbishop.
The Tories picked the right week to put Carol Vorderman in charge of the school curriculum, did they miss Question Time.
What next, Jeremy Kyle running a beefed up Familes and Broken Society Dept?
Of course under the Tories new rules Vorderman is judged not bright enough to become a teacher.
Edmund,
1) there’s not enough liquidity for me to do it; it’s nothing like the Presidential Elections! I have over 1333 contracts now and the average daily trading on this is about 50-60 contracts.
2) Hmmmm, interesting. A lot of arm-twisting must indeed be going on behind the scene… Politics is a ruthless game.
46 - The death of Simon de Montfort is easy to learn about. Somehow as a male you never forget about someone who had their genitalia removed and hung about their face.
46 agree totally - which is what i try and do - though now i no longer teach in the UK!
time for bed the Peruvian cricket “close season” starts tomorrow (this) morning and as we won the “open season” i need to be ready.
And yes there is a Peruvian National Cricket League and an National team and yes we are as poor as you’d expect but in 2008 we beat Brazil so yay!
Apparently Gordon has turned up in Afghanistan today. I wonder why.
49 - They were simpler times, were they not?
51, ooh, ooh, I know, sir! Is it because he’s a shameless unpatriotic bastard who likes using the soldiers as a political football?
52, aye. Pity it’s not the 10th century. We could lop Brown’s head off and blame it on the Vikings.
44 - The government has been talking pretty tough on the need for cuts for quite a while now.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7043198.ece
Who will the public believe Gordon Brown or the Chief of the Defence Staff -
I think if finally the public can see this as confirmation that you can not rely on Gordon to be straight on any subject the reporting of this story could be significant for the polls - much more so than bullygate and ashcroft
52 - Well everyone tended to know what people meant. Although of course occassionally it backfired as Henry II found out when he had the Archbishop of Canterbury murdered by accident.
Thanks David for the post.
We need a Finance Act before the election. Why?
Income tax is an annual tax has has to be reapplied each year by a Finance Act. The authority to collect Income Tax runs out at the end of the tax year, 5 April.
The Provisional Collection of Taxes Act 1968 provides for income tax to be collected whilst a Finance Bill is going through parliament. However those powers automatically fall away if there is a dissolution.
Hence we need a Finance Act to authorise the collection of income tax from 6 April before the election. It is now too late to have it the other way round.
Is it possible to have a Finance Act without a Budget Statement?
Never say never, but I would doubt it.
57 - One imagines that a short one paragraph bill to allow the collection of taxes as per the previous finance act would go through all Parliamentary stages and Royal Assent in about half a day.
Interesting that Schumacher’s odds have declined from 9ish back to the mid-7s. Not really sure why that should be, but there we are.
Most others are holding steady. Less than a week to go
Just realised I’ll be writing two articles every Saturday. The latter I’ll try to get done for the early afternoon this time.
The lack of a budget date in the middle of a financial crisis speaks volumes of the incompetence, confusion and dithering at the heart of government.
There are three ways to cut the defecit: spending cuts, tax rises and economic growth. Spending cuts are very difficult in practice, even Mrs T couldn’t implement it. Tax rises are probably essential, but hardly likely to be popular weeks before an election. Economic growth is not happening, and Labours “bash the rich” mentality will prevent it implementing pro growth policies such as lower corporation tax, abandoning the 50% rate etc.
So Gordon will funk it, bullies are always cowards. The interesting bit would be for Darling to have a budget anyway. Probably nessecary, but divided parties lose elections.
I see Nick Clegg is showing his true vindictive spiteful socialist colours.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8552961.stm
Mr Clegg will tell the London conference he wants Britain to be a place “where it is no longer possible, on a pupil’s first day of school, to predict how well they’ll do simply by asking them how much their parents earn”.
Brown answered the question asked. Last night on Newsnight a former general said that Brown probably did respond when asked for specifics urgently required. THE QUESTION asked should have been Did you apply a guillotine to the Defence Budget. He would then, possibly, have had to answer that he did and then why!!
Do not let the tame questions go without comment please. This was a whitewash from the start. From the chairman a charming lifelong civil servant who plays by the words!!! and four friends of Gordon’s
Brown should be heavily criticised for creating this costly nonsense. What he got was a day long political broadcast in which he proved how masterful he was!!!!
Cameron is being well and truly beaten. He should either step asid NOW or get a better team around him very, very quickly.
I take it most of you lot are graduates.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/06/tory-madrasa-young-britons-foundation
Hmmm shooting down enviornmental protesters, that’ll please Zac.
The Tories have completely lost the plot now, carol Voderman a two bit actress with a lousy degree who can read a script , and the Tories want her to devise our education curriculum. They must be wanting to lose this election with the amount of gaffes they are coming out with, surely they cannot be as bad as they make out. Only the worst prime minister in history to beat and they look like fluffing it. You could not make it up.
62 - Your last sentence proves that you are an idiot. Cameron is being so well beaten he has an 8 point lead in the latest poll.
61, be fair. It’s better than his euro capaign when he claimed the Tories would be soft on pa/edophiles because they don’t love the EU enough.
Furthermore, does anything Nick Clegg says actually matter?
But the inquiry, rather than distancing Mr Brown from the war, has implicated him in it – and raised questions about his character. He revealed that his vote to go to war in Iraq was based on the flawed information of the intelligence services and yet refused to admit, in retrospect, that it might have been a mistake. Instead, he has stuck by his decision and implied it was not his place, as the head of the Treasury, to interfere.
Mr Brown, a uniquely powerful chancellor in modern times, pretended that he was a mere beancounter. He defended his department’s funding of the war effort by noting that he did not turn down requests for money from the Ministry of Defence. But to focus on the narrow question of specific funding requests for operations in Iraq is to miss the point.
The defence budget, in the run-up to the war and during it, was not big enough to finance the foreign policy that Mr Blair wanted to follow. So an effective and strong chancellor of the exchequer should have been sounding alarms about Britain’s ability to conduct a war in Iraq in 2003 and its 2005 decision to expand its commitment to Afghanistan. But Mr Brown disappeared.
In recent weeks, the prime minister’s temper has been a topic of popular discussion. But the traits Mr Brown displayed this week regarding the war in Iraq are more troubling. His inability to admit to mistakes is disconcerting, as is his abdication of responsibility. Even voters who are untroubled by the decision to go to war should be unnerved by the way Mr Brown defended his role in it.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/31b82852-288d-11df-a0b1-00144feabdc0.html
66 - Well in the event that we do end up with the calamity of a hung Parliament then yes.
#4 Tapestry - if I can offer a small correction:
And yet the government insists on claiming their £178 billion (12.5% GDP) borrowing requirement is on track.
The defecit [PSNB] is forecast to be £176bn, the governments actual borrowing requirements for 2010/11 are much higher than this due to Gilt redemptions etc.
From the PBR [Table B21] the CGNCR figure is £170bn. To that must be added Gilt redemptions of ~ £40bn which we can only roll-over so around £210bn or around 14.3% of GDP.
[2009/10 was worse requiring £242.9bn (forecast) of net financing.]
Table B20 is interesing as it gives the cash cost of the Bank Bailout:
£84bn in 2008/09 [outturn]
£44bn in 2009/10 [forecast]
[Basically there is the defecit, the debt and the cash requirement to keep in mind]
68, if. The Tories and Lib Dems will benefit from the election campaign, and I remain reasonably confident Cameron will get an outright majority of 50-70.
As Darling has been adamant that there will be a budget, Brown has no choice. If Brown decides it is too risky to tell the voters even half the truth about the economy and says no budget till after the election, Darling would resign and probably stand down as an MP. Result chaos for Brown and Labour, so it looks as though Labour are toast whatever they do.
70 - Oh I’m confident that Cameron will win as well but comments like Clegg’s need to be highlighted to prove that he is an inveterate lefty.
57. My understanding is that we need resolutions of the House of Commons allowing the provisional collection of income tax etc pending the Finance Act which never comes into force until later in the year. These resolutions are normally passed on Budget day. Technically I think this is all the Commons need to do and the reality is that any Finance Act proposed by this Government will not come into force before the election and will be replaced if they win it. I don’t beleive we can have a proper budget for the reasons set out in the post. Any budget now proposed will be replaced within 50 days of the election by the Tories if they win and very probably by an emrgency budget by Labour if they don’t. Brown has got himself in yet another corner here by dithering. I still think the most likely way out is an earlier election with agreed resolutions in relation to tax collection.
63. coldstone
I wish to offer a summary of this morning’s Guardian splash that’s trying to create a “Tories are secret extremists and you’re all going to be wearing jack boots if they win unless Cameron disowns some people in which case it’s a massive division at the heart of the Tory Party” story. So instead of reading their piece here’s a better version of it.
It is truly shocking isn’t it that a British organisation would take some youngsters to America and let them shoot legal guns on a firing range in Virginia? After all, we don’t do guns in the UK, we’re a pacifist nation, we don’t get involved in wars EVER and we never shoot things.
What’s more, one of these people had the audacity to say that the NHS in its current incarnation was, well, you know, a bit crap. How dare they have a view that deviates from the orthodoxy that the NHS is a sacred cow and by far the best structural success in history! As for climate change, would you believe that one of these “radicals” has sceptical views in line with over 50% of the country? Outrageous isn’t it?
They’re nothing but extremists turds and we should all be wetting our pants because one of them, once, at a meeting, somewhere, spoke to someone who brother’s girlfriend’s mother made a cake that won a competition at a fair that David Cameron judged. Can’t you see the connnection? Are you blind!?! Run away! Run away!
Enjoy the rest of the weekend peeps!
http://dizzythinks.net/2010/03/summarising-guardian-madrasa-spasl.html
57. Didn’t know that about the collection failing in the event of a dissolution - thanks.
58. I very much doubt it. The election date is a matter of discretion so voting down such a bill (eg in the Lords) would not prevent the collection of taxes but would delay the election. This is the same reason that I don’t think a budget on April 12 followed by an immediate dissolution is a runner. From Verulamius’ post at [57], that option wouldn’t work anyway but even if it were technically possible, the opposition could vote down the provisional collection if Labour didn’t have their full strength out - and that would lose each MP at least two days’ campaigning. Losing that vote wouldn’t be a disaster - they could reintroduce the Budget the following day once they’d mustered their troops - but by then they’d have missed the bus on May 6.
44. “Egg on Darling’s face possibly isn’t an issue, because he’s probably toast anyway.” Genius.
73. I see the Guardian is resorting to the same kind of hysterical nonsense we saw before the London Mayoral election, very amusing.
I wonder if the columnists will be threatening to throw themselves in front of buses or leave the country again if the Tories win?
75, if I weren’t already a nailed-on Calvert voter, such promises would make me one
73 - I thnk the point of the article is that what the Tory leadership says on the NHS, the environment and so on is very far from reflecting the settled will of the Tory Party. Therefore, is the NHS really safe in Tory hands? I wonder.
47. “Announcement this week and a budget on the 24th would be my guess”
Yes, that would be my guess too but then I’ve been expecting an announcement of the budget date for each of the last three weeks and so far, nothing.
This is already the latest a budget date has been announced and even if on March 24, will be one of the later budgets in Labour’s period of government: only three (17 April 2002, 9 April 2003 and 22 April 2009) have been later. The earliest was nine years ago tomorrow.
76. yes with a bit of luck they might actually follow through on them this time and decamp to Tuscany or the Cote d’Azur permanently.
73
Ah! but in the imortal words of Mand Rice-Davis, (someone who always preferred life, ‘under’ the Tories) you would say that wouldn’t you.
Hmmm bet Peter is over the moon this morning.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1255852/So-WERE-Tory-ministers-gay-flings-Christopher-Hitchens-Oxford.html
Perhaps he’ll be able to shed some light on the subject.
All this dithering about election date smake a striong cas efor fixed term Parliaments.
The Prime Minister is far too powerful in rleation to Pralament so taking away an arhcaic perogative would be a small step to redress the balance.
David your usual thoughtful piece for a Saturday morning.
My take on it is:
Brown wants a give-away budget claiming the bankers bonus tax can pay for it. The usual things, money for hard working families, money for the elderly etc etc
Darling knows that would send the markets into freefall.
Today’s papers hinting that huge hospital ward closures planned by Labour after the election if it holds on.
So Darling threatens to resign if Brown goes ahead. He knows he is not going to be chancellor and if he is truthfully listening to the runes in Edinburgh SW he is unlikely to be an MP on 7th May regardless of what some PBers think. Darling has nothing to lose and Balls knows what a Darling resignation would do to his chances of holding Morley let alone any seat with a majority under 10,000.
Solution, either an April AGM or no budget.
If rumours are correct lots of Labour candidates have already printed their literature with 6th May on it so April unlikely.
Solution is keep the media and us guessing re a budget. Make the right noises to keep the markets on board long enough and then at the last minute present a 2 clause bill basically keeping everything as it is, enabling the Inland Revenue to keep taking our taxes after 5th April.
Labour can then go into the GE with Chancellor elect Balls making every promise under the sun knowing most voters wont understand what he is talking about and payroll voters will lap it up.
Am I too cynical?
So what are we expecting tonight?
Tories ahead by 3-5% or Tories ahead by 8-12%?
72 DavidL
Your understanding is correct in that the resolutions of the HofC are the procedure set out in PCTA68. But those powers stop on dissolution and income tax already collected would need to be repaid.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article7051875.ece
We expect a poll tonight? ICM, Populus?
81. All this dithering about election date smake a striong cas efor fixed term Parliaments.
The Prime Minister is far too powerful in rleation to Pralament so taking away an arhcaic perogative would be a small step to redress the balance.
Rogerh - Were you ever a script-writer for ‘The Two Ronnies’?
85. We’ll get the YouGov/Sunday Times tracker for sure. Then hopefully we’ll also get ICM in the Sunday Telegraph.
Taken from today’s DT . Is our letter in the post?
“On Thursday, two German politicians told their Greek counterparts that the country should sell off its assets – art, historic buildings and islands – before accepting international aid.
George Papandreou, the Greek prime minister, was dispatched abroad, to seek the help of European leaders including Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, in addressing the country’s mounting debt.
But Germany’s Bild tabloid had another suggestion, calling on Greek citizens to adopt a more Germanic work ethic in an open letter to Mr Papandreou.
Dear Mr Prime Minister,
If you read this print, you’ve entered a country completely different from yours. You’re in Germany.
* Here, people work until they are 67. There is no longer a 14-month salary for civil servants.
* Here, nobody needs to pay a €1,000 bribe to get a hospital bed in time.
* And we don’t pay pensions for the General’s daughters who sadly can’t find husbands.
* In this country, the petrol stations have cash registers, the taxi drivers give receipts and farmers don’t swindle EU subsidies with millions of olive trees that don’t exist.
Germany also has high debts - but we can meet them.
* That’s because we get up reasonably early and work all day. Becuase in good times we always spare a thought for the bad times. Becuase we have good firms whose products are in demand around the world.
Dear Mr Prime Minister, today you are in the country that sends umpteen-thousand of tourists and money aplenty to Greece.
We want to be friends with the Greeks. That’s why since joining the euro, Germany has given your country €50bn.
For this reason, we are writing to you,
Yours,
Bild Editorial
PS In case you want to write back, we have enclosed a stamped addressed envelope. Of course, we want to help you to save… “
What is the last possible date for a general election?
Five years is the maximum period for a Parliament. This is specified within provisions contained under the Septennial Act 1715, amended by Section 7 of the Parliament Act 1911.
The five years run from the first meeting of Parliament following a UK Parliamentary general election. The current Parliament was first summoned on Wednesday 11 May 2005, so will cease to exist at midnight on Monday 10 May 2010. A general election to elect the new Parliament must be held by no later than Thursday 3 June 2010.
The House of Commons library has produced a research paper on Parliamentary election timetables (PDF), and the Electoral Commission produced a report Election timetables in the United Kingdom (PDF) in July 2003.
http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/faq/elections/what-is-the-last-possible-date-for-a-general-election
61 What is it about Clegg’s comments as set out in that article you don’t agree with. Equality of opportunity? There’s nothing in there that makes him a socialist.
10.17.22. “Kings and Queens” by Eleanor and Herbert Farjeon. One poem for each monarch. Originally 1932, updated occasionally, latest edition 1983. Puffin Books, ISBN 0-14-032112-8.
My mother had an old battered 1932 edition when we were little, and I discovered the 1983 version more recently in paperback. The King George V poem had been changed from a current version to a historical version, and the new monarchs added since.
82. Thanks for your comments. I don’t think you are being too cynical to consider it as an option. My expectation is (just) of an announcement this week and a March 24 budget but it’s getting mighty close now and if that doesn’t happen, I thought it was worth thinking about what else might.
One other point to throw into the mix re Darling. As Brown well knows from experience, a Chancellor who wants to be bloody-minded doesn’t need to tell the PM or colleagues what’s in the budget until close to the event providing his own political position is secure (and Darling’s is, pre-election, because it’s too late for someone else to take over now and besides, he knows where the bodies are buried and could say so if he so chose).
The one thing he doesn’t have in his control is access to the House. This might seem like a faintly ludicrous point and providing the government isn’t completely disfunctional, is. However, if the PM and Leader of the House really want to stop the Chancellor delivering a budget they don’t like (or even know about), that could be one way of doing it. That said, were Darling to bounce the others into a date by simply announcing it without their agreement, it would be politically difficult to schedule the second reading of some private members bill in preference.
85: YouGov NOTW at least.
On the budget, Darling clearly doesn’t have carte blanche over it. At the very least it would need to be tied into the general labour manfiesto (if they have one), going forward past the GE, something which Darling has no control over. My guess…they’re 1) leaving it late to keep talk of it down,2)or theres one almighty bust up behind the scences so it’s not finished yet, or 3) they’re cynically going to avoid it. (in order of being most probable).
The only reason to avoid it is the news in it is worse than the impact of not having one….ie very,very very bad.
My guess is, there has to be a budget. there simply has to. 24th March would be the only logical date. Howver they are leaving the announcment of that pretty darn late to say the least. I’m not sure if there is a legal notice period which has to be given, but there is a practical one. The BBC needs to clear schedules for it, a lot of the stuff is given out before hand to allow accountancy firms and newspapers to produce their literature for example.
Remember its not just the budget itself. There is about a week of debate on it, including the shadow chancellors ‘rebuttal’ the day afterwards.
If we dont get an announcement early week…expect more and more nerves to come in about the UK economy.
On the Budget, it seems to be accepted that the Tories have to be tougher than Labour, no matter how tough Darling makes it. That they are stuck with a dividing line.
Would there not be an option - if the Budget is stern and tough enough to placate the markets anyway - to congratulate Darling on “finally winning his fight with Brown to see reason”, note sorrowfully that the “lengthy delay in doing so has put the UK in such difficult circumstance” (a digression here on to the theme of very slightly lower spending from 01-07 (ensuring that they can highlight slight reductions from that period that aren’t the traditional “schools’n'hospitals”) giving a far lower debt and structural deficit that would have allowed less swingeing cuts now) and further “noting that a Labour victory would empower Brown, the man who put Darling in this position and wouldn’t accept reality until forced to by Darling now, and - sadly - doom the job of the Labour Chancellor who has finally done the right thing”
That way, they could spike the theme highlighted by Parris that the pain under the Tories would be intolerable in comparison to that under Labour, retain the “tough on the economy” mantle, and still blame Brown. All of this assumes that the Budget delivered by Darling is tough enough anyway, of course. But they shouldn’t be forced to be tougher, no matter how tough it is.
On memorisation - we, of course, learned the “Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain” mnemonic for the spectrum (which did, however, have issues on memorability because none of us had any idea who Richard of York was, why he gave battle (and to whom), and why he apparently lost.
We did remember the mnemonic for the reverse direction of the spectrum a lot better: Virgins In Bed: Get Your Organs Ready.
I don’t know why my comment wasn’t shown as I only stated that Brown has to have a budget as Darling will resign if he doesn’t, which will really screw up Labours election chances. As per normal for Brown,he has caused this situation himself. If he allows Darling to have a budget he is screwed if even half the truth about the state of the economy is shown. The tories must be delighted (assuming they do want to win the election).
95: I’m not sure…these are high stakes now playing. Much higher than say last summer.
I dont think Darling would go nuclear and resign for the following reasons.
1) It would lose labour the election
2) It would increase the risk of him losing his seat
3) It would destory the chances of him becoming leader after the GE
Would Darling want to be tainted with the brush of single-handedly losing the election for Labour? No. He’s a true labour man through and through.
10.17.22.91. I went to two primary schools - one up to the age of 8, and then a second for two years aged 9 and 10. In the second one we did the Tudors and Stuarts (1485 to 1714) when I was 9, and then the Georgian era onwards (1714-19XX) when I was 10. Since then, I have always known the names and dates of the kings and queens since 1485. However, I have always been a bit shaky in remembering all the details, dates, names and order of the kings and queen from 1066 to 1485. I think they were done in the two previous years at the school, when I was 7 and 8, before I moved from the first primary school to the second.
The good bit was that we did the Tudors at my first primary school when I was 8, just before I left, so I felt like a clever clogs at the second primary school: the history teacher started the very first lesson by asking “Does anyone know anything about Henry VIII?” to which I put up my hand and said “He had six wives”, and I was then able to name them all in order.
94. My biology teacher taught us a mnemonic for remembering taxonomic classification, “Kind Policemen Can Often Fight Giant Spacemen.” Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species!
Another memorable one was from my geography teacher for the difference between stalacmites and stalactites, “When the nights go up, the tights come down…”
Just cleared some posts from the filter so the numbering will be out.
To answer the questions Klaus (welcome!) makes at [30]:
- No, the Budget doesn’t have to be on a Wednesday. They’ve been Wednesdays since 2001 and were Tuesdays before that. I do speculate on the possibility of Monday 12 April in the article and though I rule that out, it’s not because of the day.
- There doesn’t have to be an Easter recess but it’s expected and changing that expectation will be more trouble than it’s worth.
But they shouldn’t be forced to be tougher, no matter how tough it is.
I hope if Darling does a tough budget George then just says “it’s taken a long time, but they have now agreed that we had it correct all along”
He can then just offer some changes that he feels Darling has not covered.
82 Sorry folks thinking about other things AGM = General Election!!
I thought there had to be a budget before 6th April, in order to make sure that there is revenue for the new financial year. Or can they do it retrospectively? Or have I misunderstood?
Andy just seen your post at 97, and you are spot on.
101 was meant for 97
Having bowed to pressure a few weeks ago to force councils to hold overnight election counts, it appears that Justice Secretary Jack Straw has had a rethink.
Nobody seems to have picked up on the fact that the new Government clause to prevent Friday counting was completely watered down at the Report stage this week.
http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2010/03/exclusive-straw-backtracks-on-election.html
And for all those of you concerned that we haven’t had a discussion about voting systems for - well, hours - the Oscar choices this year are made by STV!
http://entertainment.caledonianmercury.com/2010/03/06/how-proportional-representation-has-changed-the-oscars/00258
99 Slackbladder Alistair Darling and Labour already know they are going to lose Edinburgh SW. Ironically because of a split vote and new candidate they have a much better chance of holding the highly marginal Edinburgh South.
101. Stalactites and Stalagmites: the ones at the top hang down tightly and the ones at the bottom built up mightily.
Chemistry, Periodic Table of the Elements, when we were 14:
Hello Henry!
Like Bees, Birds Can Not Often Fly Never.
Naughty Magazines Always S(i)eem to Please Sexy Clients’ Arses.
51 At least he was dead when he had his genitals removed, unlike the Younger Despenser (and others who had the full penalty for treason inflicted on them).
“Hugh tried to starve himself before his trial, but face trial he did on 24 November 1326, in Hereford, before Mortimer and the Queen. He was judged a traitor and a thief, and sentenced to public execution by hanging, as a thief, and drawing and quartering, as a traitor. Additionally, he was sentenced to be disembowelled for having procured discord between the King and Queen, and to be beheaded, for returning to England after having been banished. Treason had also been the grounds for Gaveston’s execution; the belief was that these men had misled the King rather than the King himself being guilty of folly. Immediately after the trial, he was dragged behind four horses to his place of execution, where a great fire was lit. He was stripped naked, and Biblical verses denouncing arrogance and evil were written on his skin. He was then hanged from a gallows 50 ft (15 m) high, but cut down before he could choke to death, and was tied to a ladder, in full view of the crowd. The executioner climbed up beside him, and sliced off his penis and testicles which were burnt before him, while he was still alive and conscious; (although castration was not formally part of the sentence imposed on Despenser, it was typically practised on convicted traitors). Subsequently, the executioner slit open his abdomen, and slowly pulled out, and cut out, his entrails and, finally, his heart, which were likewise thrown into the fire. The executioner would have sought to keep him alive as long as possible, while disembowelling him. The burning of his entrails would, in all likelihood, have been the last sight that he witnessed. Just before he died, it is recorded that he let out a “ghastly inhuman howl,” much to the delight and merriment of the spectators. Finally, his corpse was beheaded, his body cut into four pieces, and his head was mounted on the gates of London. Mortimer and Isabella feasted with their chief supporters, as they watched the execution.”
Our politicians get off pretty lightly, when they fall out of favour, I think.
Can Brown credibly continue after May 6th? It will look as though he’s being dragged before the country. If June was a real possibility, surely by now that would be being deliberatly leaked.
Are there any markets on Cathy Ashton?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1255840/How-Cathy-Ashton-laughing-stock-EU.html
112 Perhaps the need to fit a budget + budget debate and an easter recess into the schedule may provide some sort of excuse. I’ve long thought Brown if at all possible will hang on to try to get some world cup feelgood factor. Perhaps they could deliver the budget before the recess and have the debate afterwards? The speculation that the country wouldn’t be able legally to collect taxes if the budget wasn’t passed by 6th April has to be wrong surely - as then that would necessitate the passing of the bill every year.
113 - Touch of the Ma Beckett with that photo – are they related..?
111
As there are only 18 elements on your list, I assume you were 14 in 1776.
109. What a complete idiot who wrote that article. The Oscar voting this year will be by AV, not STV. There is nothing “proportional” about it at all, as we all know.
108. Ultimately, it all boils down to the same thing, which is that it is at the discretion of the returning officer to decide. If a new law merely obliges them to “start” a count within 4 hours, then they could do a token start with one or two boxes, adjourn proceedings at 10:10pm, and reconvene at 9am (or whenever). There is no definition of what “reasons” they need to give in their “explanation”. I’m fairly relaxed about the whole issue: there will be plentuy of counts overnight from which a reasonable result nationally will become clear.
101:
Stalactites and Stalagmites:
I always thought that it was “when the mites go up the tights come down”
114 - Yes, that’s fine, however to go for May 6th, Parliament has to be dissolved before the (expected) end of the Easter recess. When it dissolves, all of its bills go away, so the emergency cover that ‘we’re debating it’ give will also disappear.
And yes, a bill does need to be passed every year.
Anyone subscribing to Easterross’ parallel Scottish Tory universe can make themselves a lot of money at the bookies.
97 My neighbour feels much the same way as the chap Parris describes. Intellectually, he knows he’s got to get rid of this government. Emotionally, I don’t know if he can bring himself to do so.
The truth is that most Western electorates have deluded themselves for years that the rest of the World owes them a high standard of living; that lavish government expenditure can be maintained indefinitely; and that difficult decisions can be postponed indefinitely.
116. I was always rubbish at chemistry, and the mnemonic only did the first three lines.. Shall we have a competition to fill in the rest?
King Canute Scatters Tides Vainly, er…
Machu Picchu attacked the idea that “there is no right answer” in history. But even something as “factual” as a list of kings and queens is contentious. Antifrank’s little rhyme leaves out Tilly inbetween Steve and Harry, and there is also Harry the Young King who was considered an anointed co-king in his lifetime. And both antifrank and JohnLoony are for some reason only discussing kings after the Norman Conquest. What about Ned the Atheling and his predecessors as Kings of the English? Why should we start counting our kings at the point we were invaded by the French?
Much as I agree that people should get a good solid grasp of English history and (political) geography, a lot of the “traditional” history taught to children is just plain wrong. For example, I was taught about that there was a Heptarchy of seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms - which is crap, and was known to be crap at the time.
108, a disgrace. It seems everyone bar council jobsworths were united against Friday counts.
Another mnemonic:
“At The Canine Club Never Give Out Vicious Vegetables To Dogs”
I remember this from when I was about 9 and interested in the Roman Empire. My father taught it to me as a way of remembering the emperors after Julius (Augustus, Tiberious, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Otho, Vitellus, Vespasian, Titus, Domitian).
The point demonstrated by all these mnemonics that people are posting is that they work and can still be recalled after decades even when the facts underlying them are of no use or relevance to our everyday lives. Learning without an interactive whiteboard or computer in sight, who would have thought it possible.
If you want junior school age kids to be interested in history try this book which has captivated kids for several generations.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kings-Things-H-E-Marshall/dp/1902984846
120 - Whilst I disagree with Easterross and Scott on Edinburgh SW they do at least live in Scotland and might, just might, know rather more than you on the subject.
125, point of order: Julius was never emperor.
Listening to the last 20 minutes or so of AQ. Must be feeling masochistic.
118. That’s the clean version, but when you’re 15 the other version sticks in the mind more!!
108/124 Dale sounding off but according to Hansard Eleanor Laing agreed with Straw and thought it would be an improvement on the original clause.
Sounds so feeble as not to make much difference especially as the Electoral Commission favour Friday counting.
The Iraq war? Tremendous success, said Gordon Brown, throwing his gaze sideways, away from his questioner. Yes, the war had been a marvellous idea. Terrific. Absolutely ‘the right thing to do’.
To reinforce his message he smiled, weirdly. But still did not look Sir Roderic Lyne in the eye.
Was the Cabinet misinformed by Tony Blair? Nooooo, said Mr Brown.
Blair had acted like a living saint throughout. And the Treasury never once quibbled with the Ministry of Defence over costs. Not. Once. Honest. The way Mr Brown described it, he was practically out there in the Middle East, stuffing million-pound cheques in the pockets of military commanders. Spend, boys, spend!
What an astonishing six hours of slick dodginess. If you believe what our Prime Minister said to the Chilcot Inquiry yesterday, well, you’d probably believe that Sir Cyril Smith once dated Diana Dors and that Stonehenge was designed by Ken Dodd’s dentist.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1255816/QUENTIN-LETTS-Someone-plainly-told-Gordon-Brown-look-relaxed-Hence-awful-grins.html#ixzz0hOL1sFZx
123. “Harry the Young (co-)King”? Who he???
I only mentioned post-1066 because that’s what my primary school did. Part of the problem may be the lack of cross-discipline interactive knowledge. My abovementioned history teacher at primary school obviously didn’t understand the human reproductive system; he thought that it was possible for someone [QE1] to be born [in 1558] 11 years after the death of her father [KH8] and 22 years after the execution of her mother [Anne Boleyn].
Not mentioning Matilda? Behold Farjeon’s poem:
Stephen 1135
Matilda claimed the crown
Upon the head of Stephen,
And so they had it up and down
From morning until even;
The winner now was he,
And now was she the winner -
Matilda ruled the land at tea,
And Stephen ruled at dinner.
Matilda claimed the throne
Her cousin Stephen sat in,
And kept him fighting for his own
From vesper until matin;
One had the lower hand
When t’other had the upper -
Till none could tell who ruled the land
From breakfast time to supper.
It’s a kind of mnemonic that updated versions of the freeware “Tex” system of word/equation processing created by the genius Donald Knuth and almost universally used in one form or other by mathematicians and mathematical scientists—and unknown to pretty well everyone else—are labelled by adding a place to the approximation of the irrational number Pi. It’s currently, I think, at version 3.1415926.
Yech. What an unwieldy sentence.
There are divisions among Cameron’s advisers over strategic issues such as public spending and a growing fear that the Conservatives won’t secure a clear majority in the forthcoming general election.
And now I can bring fresh bad news. Secret talks have begun between key figures in the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties with a view to forming an alliance in the increasingly likely event of a hung parliament.
Although neither Gordon Brown nor the LibDem leader Nick Clegg have been present at any of the meetings, I am informed that the two men know exactly what is going on.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1255900/PETER-OBORNE-The-plot-stop-Tories-EVER-gaining-power-.html#ixzz0hOLvBgfQ
125: Morris Dancer @ 10:33
Mr. Dancer, good morning to you. I thought mention of the ancient world might bring you to the surface. OK, Julius was not an emperor it was slack wording on my part, I should have said the first 11 emperors.
132 Of course, if Matilda is in there we should really include Stephen’s son Eustace and Louis if France who John ran away from when he lost the crown jewels.
Max - Then they will win a lot of money
136 Louis OF France
126 At school, did you read about Tiberius’s “minnows”, and Nero’s goings on?
128. Point of order, that’s why 125 says “after Julius”.
125. I can’t say that it has ever occurred to me to want to know or remember or learn or study the order of Roman emperors, but it would have been useful to know that if I had.
Darling said there would be a budget, but did he say it will be before or after an election?
There is no need for a budget for primary tax legislation, such as income tax, to continue. There may be one or two statutory instruments that need renewal but they are easily dealt with.
A budget comes into force as the Chancellor presents it and the Finance Bill follows in due course to reconfirm it. Whether that would still be true if a budget were presented and parliament dissolved before the bill is passed I do not know.
I am sure the argument is ‘budget or no budget’ mixed up in ‘tell the truth or not’. At this point it is more electoral tactics than good government which dominates I would expect. Desperation breeds mistakes, as the Guardian and MandyPandy so amply have demonstrated.
135, aye, ’twas rather pedantic on my part (but accurate!). Anyway, once I’m done with Tacitus I need to decide whether to get some more Greek history, or try and find out about the emperors after Domitian, about which my knowledge is sadly lacking.
However, it’s worth saying that even ancient mistakes are today replicated. Whiter than white, hug a hoody etc. Never said, but firmly ensconced in the public consciousness.
Jesus. I was just downstairs, came back and listened to another minute of Mehdi Hassan being a frequent twitterer on AQ. Not sure if I can go on. I shall persevere… if I can.
140, true, but implies Julius was an emperor.
134.I hope the LibDems do attempt to join up with Labour in a hung parliament, the country will then see them for what they really are.
Speaking as a Tory, I find I have less to fear from a Labour government than one lead by LibDems. More Europe, no nuclear (arms or power), soft on crime, internationalist, pro-immigration…how any Tory could think about voting LibDem in areas like the SouthWest baffles me. Maybe the Chris Huhne charisma works in the south.
143 It’s many years since I’ve been able to listen to either AQ or QT.
135 Actually you used the phrase “the emperors after Julius” which I would have thought was interpretable in either an inclusive or exclusive way.
Of course Caesar was hailed as Imperator in his lifetime so you could claim he was the first emperor, although he ruled as Dictator, rather than Augustus who ruled by collecting multiple magistracies in one person (including the governorships of the furthest flung provinces) and having himself awarded the power of a tribune.
You could also argue the first Roman emperor was Domitian as he pretty much did away with the Republican constitution.
125. Did you miss out a G?
Bottler Brown cannotmake his mind up and the election is going to have to be 3 June
We knew Clegg was a labour lover.
Tories can give up on a coalition, and need to discuss this in debates.
They have had meetings and (presumably) agreed that they will allow Brown to remain Prime Minister.
Saying it is lies is difficult when it can be PROVED they had these meetings.
I think a hail mary from the tories to all liberals who hate brown to hold their nose and vote tory just this once so we avoid 5 years of brown is a winner.
It also explains why the liberals are still attacking the tories.
If this does not remain 100% secret then labour lite Clegg is going to have to give some answers. Obviousky a deal on AV is part of it. To keep Tories out forever, in much the same way the SNP were supposed to be kept out im Scotland as labour was always going to be the biggest party but it did not happen of course.
Question to Clegg:
If the Tories are the biggest party in votes and seats will you guarantee to support them, or did you make a secret deal to support labour as it is claimed, therefore a vote for the libs is in reality a vote for Brown even if he ends up with less seats and votes?
Donal Blaney and his Young Britons’ Foundation are today accused by The Guardian of being a ‘Conservative madrasa’ that ‘radicalises young Tories’.
Well, thank God for that.
Cranmer thought young Tories were all being inexorably dragged into a vacuum of vapidity; smothered by the amorphous policy blancmange of ‘Red Tory’ philosophy and stifled by the sponge of politically-correct, centre-ground Conservatism-lite.
http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2010/03/donal-blaney-right-wing-extremist.html
Plato : “the increasingly likely event of a hung parliament.”
Don’t worry, Plato baby girl : there won’t be a hung parliament.
The Brits as a collective are not that stooopid; they know the Browns and co has bankrupt the whole country.
The Tories are getting their act together; they probably have a few political snipper ready to strike at the right time, from the right angle.
Labour’s lies and hypocrisy are becoming apparent through their constant attacks and spins.
There is no complaisancy anymore in the blue team. Everybody, from Cammo to the grass-roots activists, will work their arse off.
LibDems will go up as per an accentuated presence in dah mediah; and this will hurt Labour, since they’re fishing in the same pound.
The TV debate will help Cameron, even if the expectation for him are stratospheric — cause he looks good and cool, thinks fast, and will hopefully alleviate, just by being calm and hopeful, the fear of change regarding savage cuts into the state apparatus.
145, I do think you should try at least 5-10 minutes of the most recent AQ. It’s absolutely appalling.
Many Nouns in *is* we find
To the Mascula assigned:
Amnis, axis, caulis, colli(e)s,
Clunis, crinis, fascis, folli(e)s,
Fustis, ignis, orbis, ensis,
Panis, pascis, postis, mensis,
Torris, unguis, and canalis,
Vectis, vermis, and natalis,
Lapis, sanguis, cucumis,
Pulvis, cases, Manes, glis.
You never know when it might come in handy.
147 Lots of Roman generals were hailed as Imperator by their men.
The Emperor was Princeps right up to the time of Diocletian. Nominally, the Consuls were Heads of State up till then.
re Oscars
I sold all my “Hurt Locker”-winning-Best-Picture for a small profit.
There is too much uncertainty. My head say “Hurt” wins; my gut feels “Avatar”.
“It’s many years since I’ve been able to listen to either AQ or QT.”
I used to love how AQ would introduce the balanced panel of MPs from each political party, along with that well-know actress, Glenda Jackson
151 — Add to this the “Chris Conundrum” or “Knox Paradox”…
And I strongly suspect that the specter of a Labour victory — that same fathom that visited Sean one morning not long ago — will have scared the shit out of many many registered voters.
Tell me Mr Dimbleby how did you get a job in broadcasting?
Stalacmites and Stalagtites. C for ceiling and G for ground.
When I was taught map reading in the forces our instructor advised that the way to remember which way round the grid reference on an OS map went was: “imagine you are out with a young lady and what you eventually want to do is get across and get up”. That is you read the figure across first and then the figures going up.
Funnily enough, I have never forgotten that.
140: JohnLoony @ 10:43
The order of the Roman Emperors has never been of use to me either. In fact, as a school boy fascinated by what the empire did and how, the names of the emperors was not important to me. My father taught me the mnemonic because of my childish interest in things Roman and because someone at some stage had taught it to him.
For me the point is that after five decades I can still recall this obscure and practically useless list. As can others here with periodic tables, kings and queens etc. recall facts that they learned long ago. The learning of facts need not be difficult, hard or boring and does not require “educational technology”.
Anyone know which Tories are doing the Politcs shows tomorrow?
Leader and “Deputy Leader”?
136 I’d argue that Matilda was Queen. She called herself Empress as it was a superior title (although she was really only entitled to Queen of the Romans). However during her few months of power she called herself Lady of the English, the traditional English term for a female ruler (Alfred’s daughter Athelflaed was known as Lady of the Mercians). She was also the legitimate heir, and as she ruled for a period, she should be included.
Louis of France was a usurper of course, and I would argue never gained the throne, holding effective power for a period really isn’t good enough; as far as I am aware, Eustace was never consecrated king and rather sometimes ruled in his father’s stead.
157, I gave up at about 38 minutes. Not content with three lefties on the panel and a delinquent, howling mob of lefties in the audience, Dimbleby has now decided the Tories aren’t up to the job economically, despite the recent market dip when a hung Parliament looked (to some) to be possible and Labour’s catastrophic record.
133 True, but a pity that Tex is almost exclusively used for science/maths. I am using it (or rather XeLaTex)as we speak to prepare a critical edition of an ancient Greek text (basically lots of footnotes rcording variant readings)and it absolutely rocks.
Face it the Tories are never going to win a seat containing Wester Hailes and the Gorgie/sighthill corridor.
158 The election will be decided, I think, by people like my neighbour. A long-standing Labour voter, who thinks Brown’s government has been disastrous, but really worries about the cuts in spending that the Conservatives would push through. He really is torn between the two parties.
132, JohnLoony:
Henry the Young King was the eldest son of Henry II. Henry crowned his son (co-)King in his own lifetime to ensure the succession. The young King repeatedly quarrelled with his father, and eventually pre-deceased him while in open rebellion.
Some details at Wikipedia, which seem to accord fairly well with what I’ve picked up elsewhere.
Incidentally, for the pre-Tudor period, the Angevin monarchs are well covered in the highly readable “Paegeant of England” series by Thomas B Costain (now sadly out of print). They’re occasionally historically contentiuous (apparently), but cover the main events well and really bring out the “feel” of the time.
Some ludicrous conspiracy theories on this site.
The budget will be on 24/03/10
The deficit is on track to be 6 billion less than forecast. Primarily through unemployment not rising as high as forecast and as a consequence higher tax receipts. The independent IFS have forecasts on their site.
GDP growth for Q4 is hardly likely to be revised back into negative territory when it was only recently revised up. Even allowing for base effects from Q3 explaining the upward revision for Q4, 0.3% cannot be revised to negative.
With most of March still to come the data so far implies GDP growth for Q1 at 0.5%. This will be released during the likely period of the general election.
On the subject of British history in schools every school child should spend a year looking at Great Britons
http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=22439
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiVIpZikl-Y
would be good places to start…
167, as well as possible voting for the two big parties, do you think he’ll possibly abstain or back a smaller party as a protest vote?
168, the Diadochi did similar things, because many of them lived to old age. Indeed, Seleucus and Lysimachus fought in battle against one another when both were over 70.
As a current History undergraduate who went through the school system (fairly) recently, I’d think it a shame if the current teaching of History reverted to lists of kings and queens. At GCSE level there is currently an admirable attempt to introduce children to the historiographical debate that is central to historical study at a higher level.
I learnt all the kings and queens as a kid but that’s not academic History; any fool can recite a list.
++++Betting Post +++++
re Oscars : Best Picture and the new voting system
I think that Inglorious Basterds to win Best Pix @ 19-1 on intrade is VERY good value.
Because of the new voting system for Best Picture, history is not a reliable guide this year.
And there is a good chance that Tarantino’s movie can squeak in between Hurt Locker and Avatar on the second or third run (if no movie get more over 50% in the first or second run)– as I suspect that many people who will have voted for either “Avatar” or “Hurt” as their first choice will have effectively put the “Basterds” as their second.
So it could win even if it got less first-choice votes than Hurt Locker or Avatar.
I’ve bet half of the profit I’ve already cashed on “Hurt Locker” on the Nazi-killing “Basterds”. In intrade parlance, you can still buy them at 6 to win Best Pix.
FANTASTIC VALUE.
155 Oops, I did mean Diocletian.
Yes I realise that Augustus’s grip on power was through different (and novel) constitutional arrangements and Caesar’s was different - and of course the Third Triumvirate got in the way - but I still think it is not unreasonable to include him as first in the line. After all, Augustus regarded himself as Caesar’s heir and successive emperors to Nero were keen to adopt themselves into the Julian gens.
I would probably argue that Princeps meant very little, it was the accretion of republican offices and particularly the tribuniciary power than gave the Princeps his authority. That and the fact that he was Pharaoh of Egypt and ruler of the “imperial” provinces which effectively gave him command of the legions as before then command had gone to the local provincial governor.
But enough of historical banter - the sun has come out, and I promised myself a walk, and I have some errands to run first.
169 I think he will vote, and it will be either Labour or Conservative (he is uninterested in the Lib dems, and I don’t think he’ll vote for Esther Rantzen). When I say long-standing Labour, it’s probably more accurate to say, he voted Labour in 1997, 2001, and 2005, but is open to switching, rather than being a core Labour supporter.
Verulamius March 6th, 2010 at 8:49 am
As far as I know your point applies only to new taxation in a budget and not taxation already passed in a Finance bill. Such taxes so legislated are very rarely time limited.
Or am I out of date again?
169 It’s extraordinary how some people in the Ancient World kept soldiering until they were very elderly indeed.
I suppose that in a society where half the population are dead by 5, it’s the toughest ones who survive, and can remain fit into old age.
171 Third triumvirate? Second, of course. I am not on form this morning, I blame the Ridley’s Old Bob last night.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article7048684.ece
…Odd how, when you want to believe someone is your staunch friend, you keep screening out evidence to the contrary. So it is with our special relationship with America. They’re just not that into us.
Why do we find it so hard to see this? All this week I’ve been reading alarmed commentary about the United States “wavering” in its support on the Falklands. Wavering? Not a bit of it. America has never backed Britain’s territorial claim. But because we haven’t wanted to hear such things, the story told by the man who was the Defence Secretary during the Falklands war, Sir John Nott, has been almost entirely ignored. Here he is, though, in his own words, in his autobiography Here Today, Gone Tomorrow published eight years ago.
The Americans, he says, “were very, very far from being on our side”.
“The State Department, the White House security staff, led by Judge C1ark, and Reagan himself, were never wholly committed to our case, although they came out publicly in our support on April 30.
Even thereafter the Americans gave every assistance to the Peruvians, the United Nations, and every other mediator — Brazilians, Mexicans and the rest — to bring about a negotiated settlement on terms which would have been seen as a surrender by … press and public opinion in the United Kingdom . . .
The Americans leant heavily on us, backed up by telephone calls from Reagan to Thatcher, to find some way of saving Galtieri’s face . . .” “Only Mitterrand and the French remained staunch allies to the end.” …
173 I believe the right to raise taxes is conferred annually by Parliament in the Finance Act, although as has been pointed out, there is an arrangement that allows the Government to continue to collect taxes in expectation of passing an Act while it is debated.
At one time the right to raise a standing army had to be conferred annually as well, as the Army and Air Force Act which I believe was passed every 5 years but was renewed annually by resolution of Parliament. But I don’t think that is still the case.
172, I see. Interesting anecdote, because I imagine there’ll be an awful lot of chaps (and indeed chapesses) like that.
174, indeed, none of this “I want to retire at 65″ nonsense. They were like Duracell bunnies. But with hoplites, and elephants.
On a slightly new, but related, tangent, it’s interesting how different the ages of the big three generals (Julius Caear, Alexander and Hannibal) were when they did their best work. Caesar was oldish (I think), Alexander was 19 when he started and in his early 30s when he snuffed it, and Hannibal was in his 30s and 40s. Yet Hannibal, despite being the only genius who actually lost in the end, lived to old age (60s or 70s). Plus, both Alexander and Caesar had their children murdered so they couldn’t succeed them.
On topic: there will be a Budget.
147 “Of course Caesar was hailed as Imperator in his lifetime so you could claim he was the first emperor…”
Under the republic imperator = successful general (you had to be proclaimed imperator by your troops to qualify for a triumph) - and that is what happened to Gn J Caesar - so irrelevant to whether he was emperor in the modern sense.
According to Peter Oborne this morning Labour and Lib-Dems are in negotiations to get together after the election, should there be a hung parliament.
Oborne says that Clegg himself would happily support a Cameron minority government, but because of the militant Mark Senior wing of his party (represented in Parliemant by Cable and Huhne I would guess?) he realise’s the Lib’s would split if he supported the Conservatives so its a non starter, so it really is going to be a case of vote yellow get Brown.
165 Constan Treader:
Interesting. Is XeLaTex free? In any case, as a wimp, I use Miktex with an editor Winedt (that does cost a bit) but enables just about any conversion, excepting “Word”, which is cr*p anyway.
180. If Peter Oborne is predicting it, then it’s almost certainly incorrect.
176.The administration was split. Even after the invasion the dreadful Ambassador Kirkpatrick dined with Argentina’s UN Ambassador. Thankfully, Casper Weinberger & Lawrence Eagleburger finally persuaded Reagan to back Britain. It has never been US policy to regard the Falklands as being British, there is a 1940s State Dept paper to that effect.
As for the French, they were actually pretty good. They persuaded Togo to give us the crucial 9th vote, meaning it was down to Mrs Thatcher to get the King of Jordan onside which she did. To Argentina’s amazement the USSR did not veto, and Britain managed to get the 10 votes on the Security Council condemning the invasion.
America should be our greatest ally, but Cameron must at all costs avoid being seen as Washington’s lapdog. It earned Blair a fortune, to be America’s unofficial Sec. of State, but destroyed his reputation.
180 - the LDs would be sensible not to jump into coalition with either of the two main ones post-election.
Maybe offer their support on a case-by-case basis, where they can really call the shots.
Otherwise, they’ll lose their USP, which is that they’re not the other two parties.
Sean Fear,
I’ve got to say that I really like Cameron’s emphasis on locality as a meme able to attract the vote of your neighbor.
Less reliance on Big Brother, but a stronger local community.
it’s just another way to think about social security.
It’s just another way of thinking the concept of *solidarity* : rely more on friends and family and local services, and less on big central global-reaching government.
That spin can probaly attract many people such as your neighbor: people who knows that things can’t keep going on as they are now, and yet worries about the future of social security and services.
The Tories are offering change — i.e. a new solution:
More local solidarity.
It’s comforting.
And it works regarding the budget : cuts will be a weapon or a tool to “make things better without just spending money”.
The tories main mesage — as i understand it — is that by decentralizing the global state apparatus, they will focus on delegating power to a multiplicity of local services, of neighborhood. And that means more responsibility to the local activists.
Cammo : “stripping away Labour bureaucracy and giving more decision-making power to local communities and frontline public servants.”
172 WRT YouGov and Wales. You can be sure Labour are in trouble even on that measure. Their % assuming no overstatement only matches their 1983 performance and as with England you can be sure they will be relatively worse off in the marginal and semi marginal seats than they are in Wales generally.
165/181 - Go TeX! I spend most of my days writing in it.
Most TeX distributions should be free
Anyone watching Cameron’s speach?
Wonderful stuff, he is nailing Labour on spending and other subjects.
Sparkling form, fair to say he is back to his best.
Localism (Phillipe Magnan)
David Cameron may be keen while he is Leader of the Opposition but when he is in charge? Has not Gove already said he’ll overrule LEA objections to schools policy?
188 — I can’t wait to bet against on Tory Overall Majority.
What restrain me now is only the thought that maybe the odds will still drift away…
I Love YouGov.
134. What is all that gobbledygook referring to???
Sky loses link to Cameron speech….hmmmm
190 — to bet again…
no, it’s not a revealing lapsus.
Sky lost the connection, lucky for Labour because he (Cameron) was slaughterung them.
188 - no, and most people aren’t. It’s Saturday and it’s football day
But if he’s as good as you’re making out, all he needs to do is do that during the campaign when the public are listening.
He reminds me of how Blair won in the way he did - you stopped to listen to Blair (even if briefly) even if you didn’t like what he said. Ditto DC.
Some people just look the part, although you don’t really appreciate that until you see somebody who doesn’t.
179 C Julius Caesar, not Cn, Caesar was a Gaius not a Gnaeus.
Yes the Imperator title was an honorific at that time generally ascribed to successful commanding generals, but the Imperator Caesar title rapidly became one associated with the Emperors. As I have said above, although Caesar’s arrangements were different (through the existing post of Dictator) he was the archetype of the concentration of power in the hands of one man, and was looked back on as the archetype by Augustus and the Julio-Claudians. So I would argue not wrong to regard him as the first Emperor, although of course he was not the first Princeps nor did he hold the Trib Pot.
re 180. Such a deal would totally split the Lib Dems and probably end it as a force. What Blair did with Ashdown has not been forgotten.
An issue Clegg faces is that the majority of his MPs are in in seats where the Tories are in second place and that colours the parliamentary party’s view.
By far the best outcome for the Lib Dems is a small Tory majority.
On topic
I linked to this last night
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jeremywarner/100004187/so-much-for-applying-windfalls-to-deficit-reduction/
“All the same, it does make a bit of a mockery of the idea that Mr Darling has become his own man, willing to stand up to his bullying next door neighbour in defence of the principles of sound money.
In any case, the Budget is awaited with growing interest. The now imminent election might lead you to think of it as an irrelevance, but actually it may be more significant than imagined. The last thing
Mr Darling wants is a sterling crisis just before an election, but if he is too generous in trying to bribe us with our own money, or rather someone else’s as increasingly the money is borrowed, he risks just such an outcome.”
197. I think by far the best outcome for everyone bar Brown and Balls, is a small Tory majority.
But you just get the feeling the country isn’t quite ready to face up to the economic mess it finds itself in?
SNP aiming for 20 seats in the election up from their current 7, Mr Salmond claims it is a realistic ambition.
Other ambitions to be debated at the SNP conference include dating Angelina Jolie, Scotland winning the World Cup and Scotland becoming independant of England in his life time.
183.Weinburger was a true Anglophile and as well as diplomatic support he ensured that Britain got the latest version of the Sidewinder missile, the AIM-9L that gave the Sea Harriers a critical advantage in combat, I think they got a 20:1 kill ratio and not one was lost in air combat. Without that missile the war could well have been lost.
180 197
Agree with Mike that best long term otion for lIb dems is small Tory majority.This hands them Browns poisoned chalice to The Tiries and the Lib dems will benefit strongly from the anti Tory swing back.
In the meantime they have to make thier posotion re hung parliament clear,particulaly at the Spring conference next weekend
And that position should be no to coalition,largest party as a minority governmnent.
Any idea when brave Dave is doing his Ashcroft interview ?
Looooooooooool Brown in Afghanistan
Nothing but predictable
Wonder what response he will get from troops now that he blames army for the deaths
200 — lol!
“Will there be a pre-election Budget?”
Do Labour really have to bother now?
The Tories are struggling badly to keep ahead since Cameron’s car crash on a marriage tax allowance. He looked defensive and cornered and the clarification afterwards didn’t help. It made the Tories look untrustworthy. That they wouldn’t keep promises.
I realise people think that it should look like Labour was attacking marriage but what they were doing was reminding the married that Cameron’s Tories couldn’t be trusted on a marriage tax allowance.
Since then the Tories have looked defensive and saying nothing substantial or popular.
The enthusiasm for cuts has hurt them badly as well. Being unable to say what they will cut specifically has just allowed them to be attacked for wanting cuts across the board. Yes, people may want the debt dealt with but they don’t want the cuts to affect them. Only “other” people.
And at the same time Brown is just getting away with it as we saw at Chilcot.
“Largest UK LED helicopter insertion in history” goes the Labour spin.
Not our helicopters though eh Gordon
Hm, I thought Cameron was in hiding?
Well there were speeches in public three times in the last week, but still thats hiding I mean its not like he went in front of Chilcot or anything.
201.Quite right. After his shuttle diplomacy failed the late Al Haig also backed Britain. The Common Market agreed on a short term sanctions package against Argentina, Australia, New Zealand & Canada fully supported Britain from the start. In Europe, only Spain was a thorn for Britain, no doubt because they had their beady eye on Gibraltar.
181 Yes, I use MikTex 2.8 with TeXworks (text editor bundled with MikTeX) and XeLaTeX is part of MikTex - so TeXworks gives me the option of compiling in XeLaTeX by clicking 1 button.
http://www.djdekker.net/ledmac/ on using it for critical editions.
What is most amusing is that Gordon was just being slaughtered on Sky news for telling fibs yesterday and then all this gets sidelined by his visit to afghanistan.
211.Brown in Afghanisan = must be a tory conference on somewhere.
185
Cameron will face immediate opposition from Local
Labour and from the Unions.
In Doncaster the independent elected Mayor is under fire. Unison have taken out full-page ads in the local newspapers rubbishing him with scare stories and attempting to provoke a vote of no-confidence - aided and abetted, it appears, by Labour councillors who are putting forward amendments to his efforts to reduce the council tax by 3% - they want to increase local taxes by 3%.
The machine is primed and ready to go. Just waiting for a Cameron government.
The Budget will be on 24 March
http://tinyurl.com/ykyvohv
I’m not convince there’s gonna be a budget, the way the BBC have been talking up this Ashcroft issue for the 6th day in row, seems that the No10 smear machine is ensuring this is kept alive when there is in truth nothing else to say. How the Beeb can do so without the other party non-dom donors being investigated at length really leads me to conclude that they are playing a part in the likelihood of a snap election.
It is common knowledge that Labour is cash strapped, so a drawn-out pre-election campaign is out. The no notice of budget backs this with poor figures expected in the final weeks of April on the horizon, it doesn’t make any sense to wait.
But what of the Local elections you might ask? Do they really care about them, I shouldn’t think so. Besides, going to the country early, without a budget, should it work and getting re-elected might see the post election budget include a few union/party political funding announcements included. They know, and most of the UK know, if Labour get the 4th term vote (even as a hung-parliament) they will do everything to destroy the conservatives and ensure that a contest doesn’t get close again.
But the BBC need to do their part and the announcement of cuts in their budget, Ashcroft, the non-reporting of Herpes-on dreadful showing in PMQ’s and the statesman like Brown at Chilcott has all done Labour no harm at all, even wiping the Cameron Speech in Brighton from the news cycle. Even they know that the partisan spin can’t be broadcast en mass as it has been for the past week/ ten days.
Headline news on Sky, Gordo might not be entirely truthful re military spending
(Sky now taking the p*ss out of Gordos shall opportunistic visit - then moveing swiftly onto Gordo runs away from Military chiefs)
2nd story - Cameron tells Labour, you f*cked up and spent all the money, your time is over.
lovely jubbly
5 more years?
Not likely
209, 201 et al
Well worth reading for an insiders view of the US position on the Falklands is James Rentschler’s diary in the Falklands Archives on Thatcher Foundation website.
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/archive/1982_falklands.asp
Reagan states right up front that US is neutral on sovereignty but against the use of force by Argentina. US was trying to balance NATO/Atlantic against US’s Latin American interest. In the end the cost of failing to support UK outweighed on strategic grounds the cost of peeing off the Argentine and other South American countries. The strong emotional support from people like Weinberger and others towards UK was a factor but it was balance of US interests that decided the eventual position.
196 So he was, how embarrassing - let’s pretend that was a typo
I am not saying you are wrong, just that there is lots of hindsight involved in deciding that him being declared imperator was different from the same thing happening to say Sulla. Then again, a case could be made for saying Sulla was a proto-emperor. Complicated stuff.
215 shall = shallow
Bloody keyboard
Sky slaughtering Brown - The narrative might have turned a corner
204. Its so obvious and so desperate its just embarrasing. I think we are about to see his ratings go down again. After last weeks smearing over ashcroft and today’s totally blatant ‘look at me, im with the troops, how can i possibly be accused of under funding?’ we are well and truly back to the old brown we all know and hate. As mandelson often says about cameron, brown’s friendly mask has well and truly slipped.
142. I think i prefer the American system, when the Federal budget is spent, that’s it. Unless congress agrees to give you any more cash, the government closes down. I remember being there during Clinton’s reign, and the Federal Government just closing down. I loved listening to the rantings of Rush and Hannity taunting anyone who wasnt a federal government employee to phone in and explain how they has being negatively effected.
The authority of Parliament seems to be taken utterly for granted by Government.
29 - “Are you going to vote for the man who made that accusation against the armed forces?
Hung parliament? No, a military coup more likely. They hate his guts.”
Sky just made that point (hating him), the venom of the attacks on Brown by the military last 24 hours “unprecedented”
Anyone looked at Arrse today?
212. Absolutely. Another poster on here a short while ago, made the very astute observation, that so much of the reductions in public spending are coming through Quangos, who’s control is entirely down to Ministerial patronage, they owe their position due to party affiliation. At the moment they are doing their best to hide the impact of spending reductions already in the pipeline, using the terminology of ‘back office’ and ‘efficiencies’ when communicating their actions, but as soon as the Tories get in, it will be front line cuts. They will even deliberately start to make decisions that will have the most publicity.
When did the Conservatives change their website - it looks good.
Cameron’s latest ‘Web Cameron’ is really good too. Trying to frame the election in the question, ‘Who do you trust to get more for less’ and does so effectively I feel.
Any link to Cameron’s Welsh Conference speech?
Who on earth in Brown’s circle suggested that it would be a good idea to again use the Forces as a PR op?
Mixed reviews for his performance yesterday, though his own demeanour was of triumph, but any good it did wiped out.
Scarily I said yesterday that Chilcot wasnt going to nail Brown on its own, what it was going to do is nail him down to a position and a story which can be disputed. This has already begun.
219 - whether it has is difficult to say, but having seen his testimony from yesterday now I’m convinced he took the wrong approach. It was him at his absolute worst; he was heavily involved in everything and always took the right decisions - except when things went wrong, then he had nothing to do with it.
It was a sort of compressed highlights of the things that annoy us at PMQs every week. But it was in a less showy, less politically nerdy forum. It was something that the media will repeat far more than your average PMQs session, and it might lead to more people seeing how Brown actually behaves when under fire.
145 - The reason Tories should switch to the Lib Dems is because our rhetoric of change actually has substance to it. The Tories are happy with the status quo of politics, as long as they’re at the helm. Why be a part of Europe if we don’t use it our advantage? The Tories were far too cowardly to even dare offer the British people a Referendum, so if they’re willing to sell out on Europe they may as well make up for it by representing the British people in the European Parliament.
We need to move politics into the future and refuse the so called change of Cameron. Will Cameron offer a shake up of the Parliamentary system that the people desperately want? No. Will they fight for more transparency in Parliament? No. Will they fight for peace Internationally and bring our troops home? No. Will they actually fight for the better standards in our public services? I hope so, but ultimately I doubt they will.
In answer to the topic, yes of course there will be a Budget. Darling said there would be one and it would look as though the ecomony was in even more trouble than everyone tohught if he didn’t present one.
WRT to the date, I think the trap that most people are falling into is the pre-supposition that the GE is May 6th. People are saying Brown is a ditherer, but what if June 3rd had been his chosen date all along?
May 6th was “inadvertantly dropped into the conversation by too many Labour MP’s early in the year. It has now been picked up by opposition and the nedia as a date that is virtually set in stone. However the choice of election date is the last advantage that an outgoing PN has, so why would Brown give that advantage away?
The Conservatives have a lot more advertising money available to them thna Labour. Wouldn’t it make sense for them to allow the Conservatives to book up all their advertising based on a May 6th election. I would guess that they have already have advertising spots all booked for April. The effectiveness of this advertising will have been diluted by June.
Ed Balls said a few days ago that that the elections would be held on the same day as the locals. Once again subliminally suggesting May 6th and implanting it in the minds of the MSM and opposition.
Locals were moved to June last year to coincide with the Euro’s.
It would be pretty suicidal to have the last TV debate on the economy within a day of the expected poor Q1 figures being announced. It would also be bad for Labour to have those figures announced a week before an election.
I expect the budget to be announced for April 14th, 3 days after return from Easter recess, as it was last year and also expect the locals to be moved to June, as they were last year.
218.Which begs the question, why did Clinton visit Argentina last week? America surely couldn’t stomach a NATO ally being defeated, but her comments at the press conference were hardly designed to put Argentina off her sabra-rattling.
As suspected, Brown has found a way to turn the soft cushions of the Spanish Chilcott Inquisition into a disaster for him. Senior military figures are b!tchslapping him all over the place and he has headed off for a photo op in Afghanistan.
I am a little confused now on income tax needing to be renewed.
The Finance Act of 2009 says, about the change the act makes to earlier legislation:
SCHEDULE 2 Income tax rates
Commencement
25 (1) The powers conferred by the amendments made by this Schedule may be exercised at any time on or after the day on which this Act is passed but not so as to make provision having effect before the tax year 2010-11.
(2) Subject to that, the amendments made by this Schedule have effect for the tax year 2010-11 and subsequent tax years.
If so, surely the tax rates continue unchanged without another Finance Bill. which matches my perception but not what others here have said.
But that does not make it definitve or me right in such a complicated area such as tax law. But I would like help working all this out please.
228 - “The Tories were far too cowardly to even dare offer the British people a Referendum.”
Hilarious; 2 points;
You only offer your precious ‘in/out’ referendum because you know you’re never going to be in a position to actually put it to the country. It’s hollow words, and you’d be terrified if you ever had to do it because the country wouldn’t return the option you want.
And secondly, I only remember one party having some sort of nervous breakdown in the Commons over Lisbon, with MPs marching out, others yelling at the Speaker, and generally behaving like headless chickens… in a bag.
From the BBC report, does anyone believe this statement?
“Downing Street insisted the timing of his evidence and the trip to Helmand province were organised separately.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8553316.stm
Why do they feel the need to lie so blatantly.
71. and your point? that Darling/Brown are not lying about the deficit (not defecit!)?
The borrowing requirement forecast was based on a spending and a revenue forecast in the last budget.
The revenues to January were down £40 billion on forecast. Spending was up £4 billion on forecast in January alone. The recession was meant to be over by January in the original forecast, remember?
Claiming that borrowing is on track is clearly a lie.
I don’t see how the rolling forward of gilt sales, and ‘interventions’ have any relevance as they are from a separate account. It is possible that Darling has slipped some of his general spending into one of these off-the-books locations, as he claimed spending was down £60 billion on forecast in December.
That would enable him to claim he was on track with his borrowing requirement but it is a clear deception.
230 The creation of a Western Hemisphere organisation excluding the US and Canada - us against them - is a big issue for the US, which has lost its allies in South & Central America. NATO is only of interest to Obama’s administration as regards Afghanistan, he isn’t that interested in Europe, its the Americas, the Pacific and the sub-continent.
134.
165.
181.
187.
210.
WHAT ARE YOU GOING ON ABOUT ?!??!???!????!?????!!!!? Either tell me now, or go and kill yourselves !!!
I have already asked politely once (191) but you completely ignored me, so hopefully someone will bother to tell me. The reference to “mnemonics” in 134 implies that it’s got to do with the sub-thread discussion of learning stuff at school, but otherwise it doen’t relate to anything else on the thread. Oh, and I tried googling but didn’t find anything relevant or useful.
228.I can’t see you have mentioned a single reason why a tory inclined voter would vote LibDem.
In the division on the amendment to the Lisbon Treaty, the tories voted for a referendum, LibDems did not.
I’m in favour of change, but out of the Brown frying pan and into LibDem Euro fire, will hardly appeal to tory voters. Are you in favour of joining the Euro still? When did you become a unilateralist party?
Taking lectures from the LibDems who took £4 million from a convict & whose own expenses leave a lot to be desired, won’t persuade many tories either.
191 JohnLoony:
You have to know the secret handshake. Or else you could use the Wiki. With a bit of motivation you’ll outstrip the rest of us.
234. They do it all the time, even when they dont need to. Could have quite easily said that he supported the troops, and following the enquiry wanted to show the troops directly how much he and the government value the good work they are doing.
It’s the same about the election that never was. He could have said we really looked into it, the polls were very close, we considered it, we discussed it, a lot, but we felt that the new government and I needed more time to get our message across. Did the polls play a part in those discussions? Yes, they probably did.
The media are biased when the Tories were well ahead they picked on Brown and Labour all the time they are hedging there bets in case - god forbid there is a minority Labour Goverment and don’t want to get on the wrong side.
Brown is the worst thing that could happen to this country but I am a little concerned that the depth of talent in the tory front bench is so limited they dont have any bruisers to attack labour with any conviction.
budgie @229, do you know what’s involved in moving the local elections to June?
In general a June election looks good for Labour in all kinds of ways, but I’d been assuming they’d be reluctant to take the risk of getting panned in the locals only a month before. But if they can just move the locals, it has to be pretty tempting.
229, 241 - Moving them requires Primary legislation and IIRC it would be too tight to get it through Parliament, even if the opposition parties allowed it
241. I know the Government has to give 6 weeks notice of moving the locals, Which would rule out moving them to coincide with an April election.
241. 2005 locals were moved for foot and mouth seemingly very easily.
236.Obama would look desperatly weak at home if it ever did become a hot issue. It would play into the Jimmy Carter narrative that the Republicans are developing. Britain’s best hope may lie in 2012 with the delectable Ms Palin.
THE BUDGET AS ELECTION MANIFESTO
The budget announcement will not get implemented in a Finance Act before the election. Consequently the budget is the same as an election manifesto, setting out what will happen after the election if Labour is elected.
So the budget is effectively the Chancellors election manifesto - and might Darling reveal some truths and future policies that Brown will not wish to be made public.
Surely Brown will want to stop a Darling “election manifesto” in competition with a Brown election manifesto. He does this by delaying the budget until after the election.
But does the Chancellor have the power to decide when the budget announcement will be in conjunction with the Leader of the House or is the PM’s agreement needed?
237. Pardonnez moi for shouting. My brain was boiling because I’ve got “Any Questions” coming into my ears at the same time.
– On topic
I would not be surprised if Brown simply announced that the budget would be deferred until after the election. That saves him the bother of having to argue with Darling.
I would not be surprised if he tried to defer the election on some pretext. TBH I’m amazing that he has not had his “medical discharge” yet so that he can leave with a 100% electoral record.
Is Brown delusional enough to think he can win?
– Off topic
John L @ 45 said “the irony is that maths and history were not so much dumbed down as up. In both cases the boffins thought the subjects should be brought more into line with what is taught at university level.”
I can only speak about mathematics, but…. what a load of total balls.
Maths has been horrendously dumbed down. 30 years, basic calculus was the “top” of the O-Level difficulty range. 20 years ago it was trigonometry and vectors. 10 years ago it was vectors, and nowadays they are barely taught basic algebra that I was taught at age 11.
How do I know this? Because I have coached kids in science and maths over that period. If you think that maths has been “dumbed up” then you are either delusional or disingenuous.
—
@batch and acronyms/mnemonics that you remember…
Order of the planets from the sun outwards to Pluto
Many Volcanoes Erupt Mulberry Jam Sandwiches Under Normal Pressure
The sequence of colour codes on a resistor from zero (black) to 9 (white)
Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Virgins Go Without
( = B/lack B/rown R/ed O/range Y/ellow G/reen B/lue V/iolet G/ray W/hite )
Tapestry, you seem to have your finger on the pulse of debt and deficit, a few people in CCHQ could learn from you.
180 The LDs have form on this. In the Welsh Assembly, they are propping up a minority Labour administration that did poorly in the last elections. Initially, it looked as if the LDs would go into a ‘rainbow’ coalition with PC and the Conservatives, but such were the objections from activists that they switched to Labour.
Something of the sort could easily happen across the UK if the election produces a hung parliament.
Vote yellow get Brown indeed!
249. My Very Energetic Mother Just Shot Uncle Norman’s Pig.
Now that Pluto has been demoted and is not a planet any more, I’m rather worried about Uncle Norman.
…Interviewed by Today presenter John Humphrys, Gen Dannatt, who is now an adviser to the Conservative party, said: “What the prime minister yesterday said about funding narrowly and precisely was correct, in so far as under government rules agreed between the Treasury and Ministry of Defence the additional cost of operations has to be funded from the UOR (Urgent Operational Requirements) process.
“That was done, and indeed it would have been an outrage if it hadn’t been done.
“What Gordon Brown didn’t address yesterday and what Lords Boyce and Guthrie are getting at was the underlying underfunding that goes right back to the outcome of the defence review in 1997-98, when the Treasury didn’t fully fund the outcome. It has gone on since then.
And he added that, since 2003 the Treasury has “effectively cut #1 billion” out of the Ministry of Defence budget years-on-year,
Gen Dannatt added that it was this reduction that former Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, former MoD permanent Secretary Sir Kevin Tebbit and former Chief of Defence Staff General Lord Walker were complaining of when they gave evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry.
“Nice try, prime minister, to say that we had everything we wanted,” he commented. “But that only applies to the very narrow point of the additional costs of operations.” …
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8553000/8553216.stm
@244/241:
Local elections can be moved three months in either direction by an Order-in-Council.
250 - Wrong. The present ruling coalition in the Assembly is between Labour and Plaid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Wales
253. What does passing an Order-in-Council entail, Martin?
@255:
Basically, Gordon asks HM in a Privy Council meeting, she assents.
The Now Show!!!!!!!!!!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00r2fh8
john 250. not sure where you get libs joining labour in coalition, PC did it, very loosely.
Sky news have just shown Brown leaving an aircraft in Afghanistan. It appears his image makers have caught on regarding his dress for the occasion. Such a shame that he looks like he is trying to smuggle a basket ball into the country under his shirt.
Sorry if this has already been posted but can’t be bothered to read throught he whole thread.
Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain (colours of the visible spectrum).
******BETTING POST********
Nap bet todat Cloudy Lane in the 3.25 at Doncaster
@257:
PLATO.
You have tainted this thread with the FOUL BLIGHT of the twin demons PUNT and DENNIS.
You must make reparations for your transgression.
I still think Brown would be extremely reluctant to go the the absolute last day possible - It would look bad, IMO and appear that he’s holding on until the absolute final moment (which of course he would be)
No, I still think its going to be May 6th - Election called sometime around 29th-31st March. Not long to go now.
Cynical Brown going to see the troops.
Tory Conference anyone?
Gordon Brown in Afghanistan presumably to get someone to agree they have all the equipment they asked for. Anyone….even the caterers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68YpiXvD2c0&feature=player_embedded
…David Cameron attacks Labour’s wastefulness in his latest YouTube broadcast
The Tory leader promises to open the books to the public so that waste can be eliminated…
That Commie left wing pinko rag ‘The Economist’ has a leader and an article about Ashcroft this week.
From the Leader:
“The big question this affair raises concerns Mr Cameron’s judgment. He is seeking to portray himself both as an advocate of transparency and a resolute chief executive. Probably the Ashcroft furore will not in itself halt Mr Cameron’s march on Downing Street. But it raises doubts about his willingness to take tough, principled decisions if he gets there. To dispel them, Mr Cameron should cut Lord Ashcroft loose”
From the article:
“The real headache is for Mr Cameron. What he knew and when about Lord Ashcroft is a big question, but perhaps a less interesting one than why the normally ruthless Tory leader has tolerated this thorn in his side for so long.”
Oh sorry….I forgot….nothing to see…move along now…
Sir Hayden Phillips on R4 Today this morning effectively said that ‘Domicile’ was not looked at when the HoL Scrutiny Ctte was discussing Ashcroft’s status - the concern was that he be physically present in the UK to attend the HoL. As usual, ‘cock up’ triumphs over ‘Conspiracy’. Still an item on Radio 4 One pm News….’what was agreed was different from what was announced’….but the Scrutiny Ctte & Conservatives agreed to the amended(and unpublished) form of words.
So Ashcroft’s off the hook….but Hague & Cameron….?
Witan
I agree that it is confusing.
If you look at section 1 FA09 it charges income tax at the relevant rates for 09-10.
The income tax rates for 10-11 have yet to be set.
Schedule 2 FA09 puts in the machinery for the additional rate of tax over £150k, but does not actual impose it at 50%.
Hence we need FA10 to charge income tax for 10-11 and also to set the basic, higher and additional rates for that year.
265. I think the Tories should pledge to have a one off “national audit” where every single item of government spending over the last 13 years is examined and accounted for and then presented to the public so that Labour can be publically shamed for their decade of wastefulness.
262, Yes, it would look bad, GIN. Unless, of course, he can find some compelling justification, acceptable to the public, for going the full distance.
This is where I think the AV referendum Bill comes into play. If the opposition tries to delay it or the Lords reject it, Brown could reasonably delay the GE in order to try and continue to push it through, taking the moral high ground by saying that he is delaying because he is fighting for the electorate’s right to have their say on voting reform, which the unelected Lords and the Conservatives would seek to deny.
And just to conclude the analysis, see section 4(1) Income Tax Act 2007 - “Income tax is charged for a year only if an Act so provides.”
If the election is delayed by the “ditherer” then even the Guardian would criticise it, slightly.
269. I think it would have to be something far more compelling than AV refernda legislation. Only a national crisis such as the 2001 foot and mouth disaster would be a sufficiant excuse for allowing Brown to go to June 3rd and for it not to look like he’s clinging on to power like a limpit.
234 ““Downing Street insisted the timing of his evidence and the trip to Helmand province were organised separately.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8553316.stm
Why do they feel the need to lie so blatantly.
Because they can - and they aren’t challenged.
While the BBC is at fault the Conservatives are also to blame. They are like neutered sheep. Because they are scared of losing, they never venture out of their comfort zone.
No risk, no glory.
BBC first story headline:
PM visits soldiers in Afghanistan
Gordon Brown visits British troops in Afghanistan amid a growing row over his evidence to the Iraq war inquiry.
Downing Street claim:
“Downing Street insisted the timing of his evidence and the trip to Helmand province were organised separately.”
But that isn’t to say they could not have rearranged Helmand to avoid the appearance this was intentional. These trips being secret must be far and away the easiest thing in a PM’s schedule to refix. And as SallyC points out this has the flavour of the wrecking the tory conference 2007 trick, and we know how that turned off the public. Chilcot may prove to obey the Brownian 10p tax band rule that everything looks fine and dandy for the first 48 hours after a Brown car crash.
This could have legs. How sad that this blog’s legendary News Sense is nursing a hangover in a shooting lodge and cannot give us guidance on this.
The trip was organised separately. Read between the lines.
The trip was organised because he was at Chilcot, but was organised at a different time, not on the same day, i.e. separately.
So not a lie, as the point made was not a lie per se.
New thread up
276. Dpends how it is spun, GIN. You will recall how Labour tried to link AV reform to public disenchantment with our Political system following the expenses scandal. In reality AV has nothing to do with rectifying anything to do with expenses, but it didn’t stop Labour trying to spin it that way.. why would they have tried to make that link?
278. Conservatives don’t need to say anything. People aren’t as stupid as Labour think they are. They are well able to put things together themselves.
Thats why despite all the Ashcroft stuff the polls didn’t move this week. Thats why everybody will see Brown desending on Afghanistan the day after giving evidence to Chilcot as the cynical stunt that it is. Most people got wise to Labours manipulations a long time ago.
Nick Clegg has given his strongest hint yet that he will join forces with David Cameron if the election results in a hung Parliament, by saying that his predecessors were “left at the altar” by Labour.
The Liberal Democrat leader revealed Paddy Ashdown recently warned him “Just don’t go anywhere near them again”, referring to the way Tony Blair flagged up the prospect of a Lib-Lab pact in the run-up to the 1997 election, only to renege on any deal following victory.
Previously tight-lipped when discussing future coalitions with Labour or the Conservatives, Mr Clegg used uncharacteristically colourful language to decry the way Labour behaved towards his party in 1997.
“I’ve looked very carefully at my predecessors,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “Look at how Ming got led up the garden path. Look at the way Paddy was left at the altar. I’ve spoken to people. Paddy is vociferous about it. He says, ‘Just don’t go anywhere near them again. It might have made sense then, but don’t [do it].’”
He added: “It was a conspiracy of Blair’s mendacity and Brown’s obduracy.”
The narrowing of the Tory lead over Labour has reignited speculation that the election, expected on 6 May, could result in a hung Parliament, with Mr Clegg lined up as a possible king-maker.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk…r-1891763.html
I do not think the Lib/Dems will go with Brown, NOTE this posting was a few weeks ago.Sunday, 7 February 2010
Parliament’s authority for the levying of Income Tax expires on April 5 each year, so it has to be renewed as a provision in the Finance Bill. As such there does have to be a budget. However, the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act 1913 allows the Government to continue to collect Income Tax for up to four months after the expiry of the measure, until the Finance Bill becomes law, so I guess if the Tories are planning an emergency budget, and therefore a Finance Bill they would want to pass quickly, that needn’t be a problem.
But for Labour, postponing the budget until after the general election really does look terrible. Then again, any budget in current circumstances is going to look terrible too.
I guess what I’m saying is that they’re screwed either way