My belated condolences. I always enjoyed reading his posts and will miss his insight and wide ranging views. May hew…
The UK General Election of 2019.
On this coming 12th of December, the UK is going to the polls. In days long gone when people wanted to garner some idea of the probable result in advance, you consulted the latest polls, because back in that day, people actually believed in polls by supposedly unbiased and objective polling organisations, but those days are long gone. If you consider the miserable performance of them over the last five years; the Brexit referendum, the Trumpie monster getting elected and even a back history of further spectacular cockups, there can only be one of two possible conclusions to be drawn from such an abysmal track record.
Either they’re absolutely crap at coming up with some sort of fairly accurate numbers or the various polls are just there to persuade you of the futility of even turning up at a polling booth. When you consider that the poll of polls on the eve of the presidential election of 2016 had lock-her-up running at 98% to the Trumpie monster’s measly 2%, even the village idiot eventually works out someone somewhere has their thumb on the scales.
In the absence of such Delphic indicators, you get thrown back on your own devices, which actually comes down to listening to what ordinary people around you are saying, and what those ordinary people are saying has little or no relation to the supposedly grand issues being touted around by the so-called major parties. They’re so out of touch with Joe Bloggs, his missus, the three kids and their concerns, they might as well be living on another bloody planet.
For the benefit of those of you not up to speed with the local political landscape of this occasionally useful aircraft carrier off the coast of Europe, a thumbnail sketch of the assorted loonies and baboons we have who’re pretending to be our beloved spokes twits of this wonderful representative democracy might be of use. The two main players are called the Conservative, AKA the Tory party, and the Labour party. Nominally, and I do mean nominally, the Conservatives are supposed to represent the right wing of politics and Labour the other side.
They were indistinguishable for years but following the new age trend in politics, there’s a half-assed attempt by the Conservatives to do a bit of populist nationalist pole dancing and the Labour party have gone all workers of the world unite, you’ve got nothing to lose but your chains.
The perceived reality of Mr. Bloggs et famille is frighteningly different.
According to a sheep shagger of my acquaintance, who’s usually got a very accurate finger on the pulse, Labour have totally lost Wales. My feeling is they’ve also lost the midlands and the north and north east, areas which were all traditionally Labour heartland. All those fashionable north London Marxist notions have totally detached the party from what used to be its roots, so the few remaining realists in the party, who haven’t been deselected yet, are all running a damage control game. Speaking as a scion of the working class they used to speak for, they’re a bloody disgrace these days.
A bunch of jumped up wannabe street fighters with no blood on their shirts who’ve never done a solid day’s work wheeling a barrow around a building site or carrying a hod of bricks up a ladder to the gent on top of it who’s actually engaged in laying one brick atop another and making something that’ll still be there fifty years after their bones in the ground have powdered into dust.
The Tories aren’t that much better. You’ve got Boris trying out a con job variation of Theresa May’s sell out version of Brexit that nobody is buying. I’m sure some bright sparks at Tory HQ floated that idea and it’s a measure of their complete ignorance about anything outside the M25 beltway, where there actually is intelligent life – the Tory version of SETI take note and move the radar dish.
Our local MP is a spectacular example of the brain-dead coziness of the political elite. She basically was gifted the seat by the retiring MP who wasn’t much good either and she’s continued in that tradition. “Of course I’ll always fight for my beloved constituents”, but the reality is she doesn’t even live in the area (we’re not that fashionable an area, to be fair), she’s got a website that hasn’t been updated since April and doesn’t hold what used be quaintly called surgeries, where a constituent could turn up and get some help against things like a local government ordinance Nazi. A quick bit of research on Hansard reveals her to be another head nodding Brexiteer, who’s abstained or been carefully absent on those critical votes.
Nominally the issues being presented as being generational ground shifters like saving the National Health Service from the Trumpie monster, as if a multi times over billionaire could even be arsed with that morsel of meat picked out from between his teeth by a toothpick after a particularly good New York steak.
On the other side, the schtick being run consists of nothing more than vote for us because you don’t want to vote for the other lot of Communist loonies. Boris Johnson, in whom I did entertain a faint hope as being a genuine populist, has turned out to be a political idiot. Anyone who’d declare a moratorium on fracking to please the green voter – who’d never vote Tory in a million years – needs their coiffure free head examined. That raffish affable charm only gets you so far sweetie pops, and then you’ve been found out.
I think when you strip off all the nominal issues presented by the mainstream tarts of the media as being the real issues (oh, look at that squirrel), there’s an anger out there in the shires that’s been bubbling away like molten lava for the best part of three years.
Where it’ll end up is moot, but one thing is for sure. This GE is all going to be about voter revenge. For a change, there will be real blood splashed on Westminster cobble stones and nobody will be doing any heart searching over the casualties.
©Pointman
Pointman's 
Pointman,
It was disappointing that Boris didn’t make the finals of the Prat of 2019 following my nomination of him and his duplicitous tomfoolery.
It seems to be all that’s on offer to any constituent anywhere in the world these days … outright lies, tell-‘em-what-they-wanna-hear, drain the Treasury, increase sovereign debt, replace the indigenous population, pander to enemies of the State … ALL of it passes for ‘political strategy’ these days, and genuine policies to preserve our freedoms and independence be damned.
We don’t have cute red squirrels to distract us in Australia, just trawler-loads of stinky red herrings dragged about to mask the stench of Organised Crime that runs the joint. That’s why the Chinese can walk into NSW Labor HQ with supermarket carrier bags full of $100K in cash, and it causes nary a ripple on the polluted pond of our politics.
For all that, the betrayal of the British Brexiteers’ bid to be free of the stranglehold of Brussels has been of epic proportions. With no alternative available to take power and send Merkel and her Minions packing, they’ll finally be subsumed and fade from sight.
In the words of early 5th century Christian priest Salviani …. “The Roman State was collapsing because it deserved to collapse … because it had abandoned the first premise of good government, justice to the people.”
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Pointy – yep, this is going to be an interesting election to watch, since there’s a lot of pent-up anger from the thinking part of the electorate and the next Parliament will likely contain a lot of newbies since the Old Guard will have been voted out. However, as regards which actual party gets a majority (if any does) it’s hard to forecast. The choice is as to which party will be less-worse, not which one has good policies.
Looking at the promises, and what people I know are saying, I suspect more people than I expected are not connecting all the dots. Labour’s promises to only tax the rich corporations and the richest 5% of the population in order to pay for their massive spending spree so 95% of the people will be better off is a case in point. Let’s say they tax Amazon heavily. All that means is that the Amazon prices will rise and everybody pays, with the main burden being borne by the majority. Similarly, if you tax the banks, the cost of banking will rise and everyone pays. If you don’t earn enough to be able to afford an accountant to find all the tax loopholes, then you’ll be paying a higher tax-rate than a rich person. Put the corporation tax rate up, and those corporations will need to raise their prices, and again everyone pays. Meantime, the higher taxes will reduce business investments in productivity-improvements and thus impact the earnings of all the people employed.
Similarly, Boris has found the money-tree and is promising to spend more on a lot of things. That money can either come from borrowing or from taxes, and if it comes from borrowing then you’ll end up paying more tax to pay the interest payments. Either way, everyone knows that governments are rarely that cost-efficient, so having the government doing something will cost around twice as much as if you employed someone to do the job. Much the same as with an insurance job – the quote for fixing something through insurance normally comes to around 2-3 times the cost of doing it outside the insurance system. After all, an insurance job is someone else’s money. Except it actually isn’t….
The Liberals are at least telling people they’re going to raise the tax rate. However, again you’ll get bad value for money because it’s a government job. It seems the more people are exposed to Jo Swinson’s haranguing, the more they decide to vote for some other party.
Not a lot of point in talking about the SNP, since all they want is Independence. OK for Scotland if the oil price goes up, and people still keep buying the stuff, but the USA is producing a lot more now and is a net exporter, so the prospects for Scotland don’t look good. The SNP wants to raise taxes to pay for more public services, so again they’ll be well past the Laffer curve on taxes (seems peak tax take around the 17% range, and beyond that you depress the economy too much) and thus have less tax income (and of course everyone has less income too). Since they want to stop the renewal of Trident, that’s a lot of high-paying nuclear jobs that will disappear from Scotland (and maybe get relocated to Portsmouth or similar). They do have a lot of wind, and valleys they can flood for HEP, but if they do the maths they’ll find that it’s only worth it if the cost of electricity goes higher by around double, and if people start installing new nuclear then the wind-power/pumped HEP storage won’t make a profit. You’re left with Silicon Glen as the big profit-centre for an independent Scotland.
Whichever party you vote for, therefore, you’re going to end up with a lower standard of living because the politicians are lying (or, to be kind, they haven’t got the sums right). Tories probably the least-worst since they won’t increase taxes as much, but then there’s that promise to implement Boris’s version of Brexit….
The speed with which Boris got a “better deal” from the EU is evidence that they didn’t give anything away and that the deal will be worse for the UK than even May’s deal. It’s not actually an exit from the EU, just getting less say about what happens. Corbyn’s version of Brexit involves a customs union and remaining in the Single Market, and thus must also allow free movement of workers (part of the “four freedoms” that is central and will not be negotiable) and thus isn’t actually a Brexit at all. Liberals would revoke Article 50, so absolutely no Brexit. The SNP also want to cancel Brexit, but via a second referendum. Apply enough Project Fear and the electorate will cave in, even though all the dire predictions of a depression just for voting in favour didn’t eventuate and actually the UK did rather well considering the business uncertainty…. Jobs were added, income rose, with the main problem being forward-buying to tide people over the two final dates for Brexit that didn’t happen.
What are their policies to deal with The Climate Emergency? Seems there they’ve all taken the Kool-Aid and haven’t actually looked at the source data. Maybe that’s something to do with having a 5-year horizon when looking at the past and the future, but you’d think if they were worried about sea-level rises they’d actually look at the tide-gauge data which isn’t hard to find. Similarly, looking back at temperature records for more than a couple of decades (and England has instrumental records back to 1659) should show there isn’t a problem in reality. 30 years is simply too short a horizon to be of any use when talking of Earth science, where cycles can be multi-decades and multi-centuries long. All political parties thus want to spend a lot of tax-payers’ money with no practical benefit. What does a few hundred billion of Someone Else’s Money matter, when it seems everyone wants that to happen and seem willing to pay for it?
Yep, I didn’t mention the Brexit party during that rant. Seems they’ve written themselves out of things and want Boris to get elected so they get any sort of Brexit, even though they know it isn’t actually a Brexit at all except in name.
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Pointman, an astute appraisal of the end point of 40 years of the professionalisation of the politics of our nation, that almost no MP has ever worked in the real world. I have met quite a few over this time and have observed this gulf emerging. However I hope you are wrong in at least one aspect of Boris. Observing the state of europe it is absolutely imperative our membership of the union ceases by 31/1/20. Never mind the “future relationship” by 31/12, this will be rendered moot by Harold Macmillans only fear, “events, dear boy, events”. Boris got his withdrawal agreement because Macron wants the UK out of the way as Germany fragments and the EU restructures. Nothing else explains the rapid change of policy. I think the Global Warming issue has become completely toxic and Boris has actually backed away into platitude leaving all the other parties promoting the agenda of the psychopaths of Extinction Rebellion. This will not be lost on the voters. Myself I am eternally grateful to the man who kept the UK out of the Euro shackles, Gordon Brown! I will be happy to place an appreciative wreath on his grave.
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D-2 … I can only hope your tongue is planted firmly in your cheek when it comes to Gordon Brown, though I too, would be most appreciative of the opportunity to place a wreath on his mortal remains.
It was Brown who signed the Lisbon Treaty or rather, didn’t … leaving Miliband to sign alone, only catching up later to tidy up the paperwork.
“The Conservatives claimed it made him appear “gutless” and referred to it as a “stunt” which proved Brown was “not very good at international diplomacy”. The Liberal Democrats claimed it raised “serious questions” and Chris Huhne said showed “inept and peevish behaviour that leaves Gordon Brown’s reputation for honest dealing with our EU partners hanging by a thread”. Parts of British media also criticised Brown for this, suggesting he did it because he was ashamed to sign the Treaty.”
And ashamed he should have been … because that Treaty contained “a plan to facilitate military mobility within and across the EU”. It meant that the EU Army, without requiring any “invitation” from a member country, could enter that country “to quell civil unrest”. Foreign boots on the streets of London?
“Civil unrest”? That would be a Citizenry voicing its disapproval of tyrannical diktats … a la Gilets Jaune. Does anyone really think Macron conjured up 89,000 extra police out of thin air? Most of them came from barracks in southern Germany.
And now Boris’s much vaunted Deal commits thousands of British troops and access to military intelligence to EU commanders in perpetuity, all while British taxpayers foot the bills …. forever!
Perhaps Boris will install a rotisserie in Churchill’s grave, to help the old bloke out as he turns in disbelief.
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Black swan, Brown and Blair contested the labour party leadership in 1994 after the death of John Smith. They agreed that Blair would be leader for the first term after an anticipated victory but would hand over to Brown during the second. Brown was chancellor. His ambition was to be the PM who took the UK into the euro so he set impossible conditions for joining to thwart Blair. By the time he reached no 10 it was economically (and politically) impossible to join, whatever the conditions. His ambition had saved the nation, had we joined the power of the ECB would bind us forever as Greece, Italy and Spain. have already found, all anti EU movements stillborn. Hence my appreciation.
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This sort of sums up the local feeling.
One morning a blind bunny was hopping down the bunny trail
and tripped over a large snake and fell, kerplop right on his
twitchy little nose.
‘Oh, please excuse me,’ said the bunny.
‘I didn’t mean to trip over you, but I’m blind and can’t see.’
‘That’s perfectly all right,’ replied the snake. ‘To be sure, it was my fault.
I didn’t mean to trip you, but I’m blind too, and didn’t see you coming.
By the way, what kind of animal are you?’
‘Well, I really don’t know,’ said the bunny. ‘I’m blind, and I’ve never seen
myself. Maybe you could examine me and find out.’
So, the snake felt the bunny all over, and he said, ‘Well, you’re soft,
and cuddly, and you have long silky ears, and a little fluffy tail and
a dear twitchy little nose. You must be a bunny rabbit!’
The bunny said,
‘I can’t thank you enough. But by the way, what kind of animal are you?’
The snake replied that he didn’t know either, and the bunny agreed to
examine him, and when the bunny was finished, the snake asked,
‘Well, what kind of an animal am I?’
The bunny had felt the snake all over, and he replied,
‘You’re cold, you’re slippery, and you have no balls …
You must be a POLITICIAN’
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We here in the States thought at first Boris was the UK version of Trump. But as you pointed out, he has played the Brexit fiasco all wrong all the way down the line. So either he is incredibly stupid, or he is just another political hack.
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The major paper here is claiming (11/12) that the UK election is line ball, and Labour only have to hold all their seats as the Lib-Dems and SNP pick up enough Tory ones to form a coalition.
Query: How can the SNP trade on “scottish independence” while advocating subservience to unelected bureaucrats in Brussels?
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“According to a sheep shagger of my acquaintance, who’s usually got a very accurate finger on the pulse, Labour have totally lost Wales. My feeling is they’ve also lost the midlands and the north and north east, areas which were all traditionally Labour heartland”
Congratulations, you made an accurate prediction unlike all the polls.
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woohoo
they did it
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You called the brexit referendum right, predicted Trump winning a year before and nailed the UK GE result exactly. You should be setting odds in my home town of Las Vegas.
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Actually, he should be playing the odds! Much more profitable! 🙂
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All done and dusted now, so Boris has a pretty free hand for the next 5 years. Back in the 2017 election, May pissed off her base (bigly…) with the Dementia tax and so Corbyn had a much larger gain than most people expected. This time, it’s Corbyn who’s made the major mistake in the promises and a lot of the North and Wales decided that they didn’t want everything nationalised and another 5 years of indecision on Brexit, and held their noses and voted for Boris instead as the least-worse option. Given the choice of whether they wanted Britazuela or not, they chose not to go that way.
However, the massive majority Boris now enjoys also means he won’t need to worry too much about the ERG and I think he’ll likely go for the Brexit-in-name-only in order to reduce the pain of the transition (by making it a very small transition) and keep most things exactly the way they are with the EU with only the headlines being a little different. I think that won’t leave much space for a wide-ranging trade deal with the USA, Australia, New Zealand etc., and in practice the UK will be following all the EU rules and be effectively still within the Single Market even whilst saying it is outside.
The big thing though is that the uncertainty for UK businesses will be reduced. Probably make bugger-all difference to the immigration rate, or the seasonal farm-workers from Eastern Europe (who do the graft work that the UK youth no longer want to do), or the hotel and other hospitality staff who are currently largely immigrants. There’s a shortage of UK-born people who want to do those sorts of jobs for the wages that are offered, so they are largely filled with immigrants who find the situation better than the one they came from. At this point in time, there’s no alternative to having people to do these sorts of jobs or the care-jobs in the old folks’ homes, so if you stop immigration the wages will need to be improved. Standard supply and demand.
Given the situation, and those new Conservative voters in the North and Wales, I think it’s likely that Boris will spend more money there in infrastructure than we’ve been used to rather than pushing the majority of the spondulicks to the South East which has been standard government policy for as long as I’ve known. I’ve no idea as to whether he’ll spend the money wisely and well, though, or whether he’ll go for the flashy big deals that look impressive but don’t improve productivity. After all, he has a track record of planning things that would have little use.
The actual result of the election was probably the best result we could have wished for. Corbyn is asserting that his manifesto wasn’t that extreme and can’t understand why the UK didn’t vote for it, and though the Labour party will be electing a new leader fairly soon it seem pretty certain that Momentum will ensure that the next one has much the same predilections and will be just as full-on Marxist and will thus hopefully not get elected to PM either. I can only hope that Boris does a good job and doesn’t cock-up too much. I don’t doubt his intelligence, and if he chooses his Cabinet well they’ll do the work he can’t be bothered with doing.
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