British General Election Thread

[shygye]

You mean the radical Islamists?

 

9fPSKxmMfqU

 

Sorry for being on topic.

[Coss]

Question:

 

How can a good legitimate posting about current UK politics degrade down to have naked Japanese gals?

 

 

Quite easily it seems.

 

 

I have quite a bit to state about British/UK politics and now I see pictures of butt wedged non-English gals.

 

Were I determined to expound on the state of the British/UK's political compass, pictures of butt wedged non-English girlies might serve, to inject some levity into an otherwise thrilling and earth shaking occupation.

 

Cheers

 

Coss

 

[Nervous God]

Bust - those pics are totally off topic.

 

Please only post relevant photo's

[Flashermac]

That ain't no gal! Actually, it looks a bit like you in a wig.

 

 

[SpiceMan]

Question:

 

How can a good legitimate posting about current UK politics degrade down to have naked Japanese gals?

 

I have quite a bit to state about British/UK politics and now I see pictures of butt wedged non-English gals.

 

Unit731, I would like to hear what you have to say.

 

 

 

[unit731]

Who really does control public opinion?

 

"Only The Mirror, a tabloid, appears to be solidly in Mr. Brown’s camp.

 

If Mr. Cameron is so popular in the media, why is he in such a tight race? Maybe this is a sign of the waning influence of newspapers during the first British national election campaign to feature televised debates by party leaders. This loss of leverage was highlighted by The Independent in ads that featured headlines like, “Rupert Murdoch won’t decide this election. You will.â€Â

 

 

NEWS

 

 

[SpiceMan]

Unit, Thats an interesting NY Times article.

 

Here's what was written in the Guardian by a former Sun editor.

 

[bigger]Nick Clegg's rise could lock Murdoch and the media elite out of UK politics[/bigger]

 

At the Sun, we deliberately ignored the Lib Dems. The cosy pro-Cameron press may now be left floundering.

 

David Yelland

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 18 April 2010 23.00 BS

 

I doubt if Rupert Murdoch watched the election debate last week. His focus is very firmly on the United States, especially his resurgent Wall Street Journal. But if he did, there would have been one man totally unknown to him. One man utterly beyond the tentacles of any of his family, his editors or his advisers. That man is Nick Clegg.

 

Make no mistake, if the Liberal Democrats actually won the election – or held the balance of power – it would be the first time in decades that Murdoch was locked out of British politics. In so many ways, a vote for the Lib Dems is a vote against Murdoch and the media elite.

 

I can say this with some authority because in my five years editing the Sun I did not once meet a Lib Dem leader, even though I met Tony Blair, William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith on countless occasions. (Full disclosure: I have since met Nick Clegg.)

 

I remember in my first year asking if we staffed the Liberal Democrat conference. I was interested because as a student I'd been a founder member of the SDP. I was told we did not. We did not send a single reporter for fear of encouraging them.

 

So while we sent a team of five, plus assorted senior staff, to both the Tory and Labour conferences, we sent nobody to the Lib Dems. And while successive News International chiefs have held parties at both those conferences, they have never to my knowledge even attended a Lib Dem conference.

 

It gets even worse. While it would be wrong to say the Lib Dems were banned from Murdoch's papers (indeed, the Times has a good record in this area), I would say from personal experience that they are often banned – except where the news is critical. They are the invisible party, purposely edged off the paper's pages and ignored. But it is worse than that, because it is not just the Murdoch press that is guilty of this. The fact is that much of the print press in this country is entirely partisan and always has been. All proprietors and editors are part of the "great game". The trick is to ally yourself with the winner and win influence or at least the ear of the prime minister.

 

The consequence of this has been that the middle party has been ignored, simply because it was assumed it would never win power. After all, why court a powerless party?

 

So, as the pendulum swings from red to blue and back to red, the newspapers, or many of them, swing with it – sometimes ahead of the game and sometimes behind.

 

Over the years the relationships between the media elite and the two main political parties have become closer and closer to the point where, now, one is indistinguishable from the other. Indeed, it is difficult not to think that the lunatics have stopped writing about the asylum and have actually taken it over.

 

We now live in an era when very serious men and women stay out of politics because our national discourse is conducted by populists with no interest in politics whatsoever. What we have in the UK is a coming together of the political elite and the media in a way that makes people outside London or outside those elites feel disenfranchised and powerless. But all that would go to pot if Clegg were able to somehow pull off his miracle. For he is untainted by it.

 

Just imagine the scene in many of our national newspaper newsrooms on the morning a Lib-Lab vote has kept the Tories out of office. "Who knows Clegg?" they would say.

 

There would be a resounding silence.

 

"Who can put in a call to Gordon?" another would cry.

 

You would hear a pin drop on the editorial floor.

 

The fact is these papers, and others, decided months ago that Cameron was going to win. They are now invested in his victory in the most undemocratic fashion. They have gone after the prime minister in a deeply personal way and until last week they were certain he was in their sights.

 

I hold no brief for Nick Clegg. But now, thanks to him – an ingenue with no media links whatsoever – things look very different, because now the powerless have a voice as well as the powerful.

 

All of us who care about democracy must celebrate this over the coming weeks – even if Cameron wins in the end, at least some fault lines will have been exposed.

 

[SpiceMan]

The Times is predicting a hung Parliament. Lots of folks in the US would like to hang Congress too.

 

 

http://generalelection2010.timesonline.co.uk/#/Predictions

 

Flash, historically, or at least for the past 31 years, the polls have consistently underestimated the support for the Conservative party. David Cameron is warning about a hung parliament to encourage casual Conservatives to go out and vote for his party. And that message is supported by Murdoch's press and the Daily Mail who have gone to great lengths to publicize the horrors of a hung parliament. But since the electorate is divided it makes sense for a democratic government to also be split. A hung parliament would result in nothing more sinister than a coalition government which works in many countries. Getting that message through to tabloid readers is a real challenge which the Liberal Democrats do not want to address.

 

Bear in mind that the UK does not have the checks and balances that the US enjoys. When one party gets a majority in the House of Commons, it normally passes deeply unpopular legislation without hindrance. We do not have filibustering in the UK. Members of Parliament very, very rarely get a chance to vote how their constituents want. The MPs are controlled by their parties so tightly that the process is called whipping.

 

I don't really support any party but I would like to hope for a coalition government as that would be more representative and therefore less oppressive than the governments we normally have.

 

[Flashermac]

 

<< The MPs are controlled by their parties so tightly that the process is called whipping. >>

 

This has always been beyond the comprehension of Americans. If a US politician voted against his constituents' wishes, he'd be history.

 

The Canadian parliament is fun though, especially when they get up and thump each other.

 

 

 

[shygye]

... you are forgetting the GOP.