May 5th is the referendum on voting reform, sadly the only choice is to keep it as it is FPTP (first past the post) or AV (alternative vote), obviously I would prefer PR (proportional representation) but that's not on the list.
Anything that gives me a slight chance of not having a Tory MP is OK with me so I'll be voting yes to AV even though I doubt it will win.
Anyway this video explains it all reasonably well :)
Anyone else think it's a bit ironic that the the police blamed "drunken behaviour" for the mini riot that smashed an unwanted Tesco branch in Bristol yesterday.
I wonder if they'd got their booze from Tesco before it was attacked?
Always thought this was a great advert.
Basically pointing out that you shouldn't take everything at face value, seen from a different point of view the whole context is changed.
Something new today, the Tories stop blaming Labour and blame the weather!!
Nothing to do with their feed the rich, screw the poor policies of course?
Well it's 2011 already, and about 7 months since I updated this blog!!
Doesn't time fly when your not having fun.
Politics
8 Months of Tory (or coalition?) rule that has been pretty much as I thought, the rich still getting richer the poor getting even poorer.
I can't believe every Tory interviewed still trots out the "labour legacy" line no matter what the question, the facts were all there before the election and they still promised to sort out the problems and 8 months in and they still claim to not have known what state the countries finances were in?
Of course they are loving it really with the excuses ready made and the Liberals to blame if that fails, they've done their homework on how to survive at the next election and all the Sun reading muppets will still fall for it.
As for Labour I got my dream ticket of Ed Milliband and Alan Johnson but so far Little Milliband has been a damp squib and what sense he was talking pre-election seems to have deserted him totally now.
Personal
A year of working a dead end job has lightened the financial burden, and apart from the 6 phone calls a day from Credit Solutions Ltd who can't seem to get the hang off picking up the direct debit I set up 18 months ago to pay off my Capital One credit card bill (about a grand) the rest have been sweet as.
The missus is slowly getting worse from her illness and now has to use a walking frame on trips outdoors :(
Youngest son who is at Uni is facing about 25 grand of debt when he leaves despite working 2 part time jobs to keep the wolves from the door, luckily he finishes this year before the tuition fee rises even more.
Other
I do apologise to anyone who was a regular here and thought I was dead, in a lame Tory way I'll trot out some excuses!! back in work and looking after a sick wife doesn't leave a lot of time and what time I've had I spent wasting on other blogs (music and football) and a little too much time spent farting around on Facebook :(
I do have a lot to say and I am always thinking of stuff to put here usually while working or travelling to and from work but like the words from my favourite football teams theme song "just like my dreams they fade and die" and I get home and go blank.
Maybe when I'm richer I can get one of those internet phones and post lots of crap (I mean my thoughts) in a Twitter stylee ... or maybe not.
1.3 million legal shotguns and nearly 450,000 legal rifles in our gun free society so no need to change our strict gun laws?
So about 1 in 30 people in this country own guns legally with probably more held illegaly (nobody knows), experts estimate 1 in 4 of us will have mental health problems during our life so there is a good chance some of those gun owners aren't the full ticket.
I know the "nutter with a gun" incidents are rare in this country, but why do we have so many legal guns? the usual excuses are trotted out that farmers can't farm without their guns so I really don't know how we managed to eat in the thousands of years before guns were invented.
Shooting club members need to have their own guns to practice, I've known several people who were members of gun clubs who you wouldn't want to meet when they were armed, one American I used to work with would adopt a gun pose and pretend to shoot anyone he didn't like (which was most people), luckily his guns were kept at the range.
Most experts and politicians who support the current gun laws I would guess enjoy a bit of weekend shooting on their estates, blasting pheasants and grouse for sport so why would they want guns banned.
My own opinion hasn't changed because of this weeks events, I've never seen the need for them in this country, the police have a selection of new technology non lethal equipment at their disposal to subdue anyone violent, and anyone who feels the need to shoot something for sport can play video games or learn how to use a catapult.
Cameron stands up in Parliament and says that the health service will be better for everyone, in the following local news they announce that my local already overworked hospital is to cut 400 jobs and 6-8 wards are to close?
My wife had 2 appointments booked next month one with the neurological department and one with the eye doctor both to do with her illness, both have been cancelled in the last week.
The hospital had tea and snack bars run by the WRVS (Woman's Royal Volunteer Service) both without any cost to the hospital, and the WRVS raised money for the hospital as well (£80,000 last year) which is given for vital equipment but that is ending as the local tories have decided to kick them out and pay £100,000+ a year for a private contractor to take it over.
After years of trying the wife finally got incapacity benefit last November after they finally agreed to agree with the doctors that she is disabled, but an early announcement from the gruesome twosome is that incapacity benefits will be cut.
Why can't they be honest and point out if your ill they want you to die and not be a drain on resources.
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So the deal was done, the Liberals have taken their chance to be part of the government for the first and only time this century?
Vote Lib Dem and keep the Tories out was a rallying cry in more than just my local constituency, yeah right that worked didn't it!!
It will be interesting to know if Cameron's "sack your MP" statement can be used by disillusioned Lib/Dem voters who never wanted to be Tories.
Anyway we've had the "love in" on the grass and Clegg seems to have forgiven Cameron calling him a joke, and each of them have forgotten rubbishing each others policies.
Typical two faced politicians, we shouldn't be surprised.
It was interesting to see Vince Cable's face when he was asked about working with George Osborne, I get the feeling that little partnership is going to be strained.
Their is still one seat up for grabs (safe Tory seat Thirsk) and as far as I know the Lib/Dems are still putting up a candidate against the Tory, it might be interesting to see how much the Lib/dem vote declines as it seems totally pointless to vote for them now.
So day one of this new era has been and gone and already cracks have started to appear, the National insurance rise proposed by Labour and condemned by Cameron and Clegg has been approved but for employees only (wouldn't want to upset the Tory bosses) and when challenged on Newsnight the leading Tory was very quick to blame the Lib/Dems for it saying it was needed to subsidise the 10k tax break promised by Clegg and co. No surprise that the NI rise comes into effect within a year but the promised no tax for people earning less than 10 grand will be "phased in" probably meaning it's not going to happen, Indeed almost every awkward question was answered with reference to the Lib/Dems policies being responsible so it seems the Tories have not only got the power they wanted but have a ready made scapegoat for any unpopular policies they are likely to introduce.
A change to the constitution was sneaked in meaning that now 55% of MP's are now needed to vote down a government against the old 51%, and a fixed term of 5 years is now the rule so it looks like you're stuck with this lot for the full term unless the Lib/Dems do the decent thing and break up this coalition.
My early prediction for 2015
Record unemployment, record levels of poverty, and frequent riots.
The tories will of course blame the previous Labour government and the polices forced on them by the Lib/Dems.
Vince Cable will be leading a breakaway version of the Liberals who have distanced themselves from Clegg.
Brown's gone and Labour are looking for a new leader which in my opinion isn't an easy task as none of the front runners inspire me much.
Ed Balls (with a name like that he's bound to talk bollocks, which he usually does), David Milliband (who as some radio host pointed out isn't even the best politician in his own family), Harriet Harman (have no idea why anyone would put her forward?), Andy Burnham (not much substance but might appeal to all those people who said they voted for Cameron because he was young and a fresh face?) and probably a few other less well known names.
My own preference would be the more talented Milliband brother Edward or old stager Alan Johnson who I don't think will actually stand.
I've got doubts either of those fit the bill though as one is a bit too left wing for "new new" Labour and the other is 60 years old which seems to be a no no these days.
Hope they sort it out soon though because the whirlwind romance of Cameron and Clegg is bound to end in divorce sooner rather than later.
So it's a hung parliament the Tories leading with 306, Labour 258, Lib Dems 57, Others 28 with 1 still to come.
Percentage wise the Tories (36%) actually beat "none of the above" who only had 35% this time whose share was bolstered by thousands of people who couldn't vote due to being locked out of polling stations after queueing for hours, or by some polling stations running out of voting slips?
OK I'm depressed by this as I don't beleive there are over 10 million millionaires in this country (which would be my only reason for voting Tory), so I assume the Tory biased newspaper and TV coverage have again influenced the result.
"We want change" they kept saying, forgetting that change doesn't always mean "change for the better", this could be as good as it gets and the only way is downhill.
How can "change" mean electing the party who fucked up the country in the Eighties and Nineties and you kicked out with a vengance in 1997, it's the same party with the same ideals only with a new figurehead. They will do the same again and we'll be back here in 5 years saying we want change again.
Of course we could be doing this all over again in 6 months as I still don't think Clegg can possibly support Cameron and expect to keep the support of his party, surely it's commiting political suicide to side with the Tories for the short term gain of a few years in the limelight, I believe a large chunk of the Liberal support are former Labour supporters who would not stand for a leader supporting the Conservatives.
A lot of us fell for the hype that the Liberals were actually a credible third party after Clegg's X-factor win, but the voters when it came down to it ignored him and they did worse than the last election, supporting the Tories now could pretty much wipe them out as a political force in future elections, as the Tories would use that support to point out that there wasn't a credible reason to vote Lib/Dem anymore.
On a different note, as I like playing with figures here is the number of seats that would have been won using proportional representation (figures in brackets are actual seats), assuming 650 seats to play for.
I've used the top ten parties with all others grouped as "others" obviously.
Conservative - 235 (306)
Labour - 189 (258)
Lib/Dem - 150 (57)
UKIP - 20 (0)
BNP - 12 (0)
SNP - 11 (6)
Green - 6 (1)
DUP - 4 (8)
Sinn Fein - 4 (5)
Plaid Cymru - 3 (3)
Others - 16 (5)
Actually sat through about 7 hours of the TV election coverage, and have no idea why I bothered.
The choice was the BBC who seem to have spent a fortune of the licence payers money on a huge set, silly high tech graphics and a boat load of minor celebrities.
I do like David Dimbleby who does seem to remain impartial unlike some of his co-presenters, I have no idea why the employ Andrew Neil who must still be getting paid by Murdoch going on the amount of bias for the Tories over the campaign.
The celebrity boat was cringeworthy with the Shredded wheat haired Neil interviewing drunken Z-list celebs who didn't have a clue what was going on.
It doesn't take a political "heavyweight" to guess which way people like Bruce Forsyth are going to vote does it?
Paxman is way past his "sell by" date, as he hasn't got the better of any politician in years, and last night I was just embarrassed for him as he asked the same question over and over of every Labour MP about "how can you form a government when the people have rejected you" and could only pull faces when they obviously refused to answer when at the time only a fraction of the votes had been counted.
Also his opening question to rejected Lib/Dem Lembit Opik was schoolyard stuff asking him if it was down to the Cheeky Girls.
I don't mind Jeremy Vine but why did they give him the job of explaining the election with a collection of CGI dominoes and paving slabs and other gimmicks to would have looked better on Newsround or C-Beebies as they seemed designed so the under fives could follow it, and I'm guessing not many of those had stayed up to watch. Also Emily No-mates operating that giant I-pod thing seemed like they were trying just a bit too hard to impress the younger generation and failing miserably.
The ITV coverage was basic but effective as they seemed to be getting the results about 15 minutes before the BBC for some reason, only spoiled by having "Bride of Frankenstein" Anne Widdecombe as a studio guest which surely must have pleased the BBC as I can only take about a minute of her before changing channels.
Channel 4 decided to have an alternative election special hosted by David Mitchell, Jimmy Carr and Charlie Brooker which sounded like an excellent idea but was pretty disappointing, it could have been done so much better.
So overall another 7 hours of my life wasted, it would have been longer but I fell asleep long before the end and have to thank my Cat for scratching my leg to remind me to let her out otherwise a night in the chair usually leads to a stiff neck next morning.
Well I've done my duty and voted, and once again it'll make as much difference as throwing it in the bin in this Tory safe seat :(
Once again the wife and me were by far the youngest people at the polling station, which considering we're both now over 40 is still surprising.
My kids and their friends although doing things like joining facebook groups and having opinions in support of various parties seem unlikely to bother voting with the most common comment being "it won't make any difference", which seems to be the general opinion of most young people I know.
So we should know which bunch of crooks will have the power sometime in the next 12-16 hours, a 3 way tie would be interesting but I expect the Tories to win although possibly not with an overall majority, I very much doubt that the Lib/Dem's 33% of the vote (according to polls) will translate into 33% of the seats and they will still be the third party, although I could be wrong and usually am.
It would be interesting to know how much the Tories have spent on advertising (campaigning) this time as everywhere I look I see posters of prospective Tory candidates, most web sites I log into have Conservative adverts jumping out at me, campaign leaflets coming through my letterbox every couple of days, and I had to drive to Norwich yesterday and virtually every farmers field I passed had a large placard in support of the area's Tory planted by the side of the road every 50 yards I estimate I saw about 500 in my 2 hour drive (there were 2 for the Liberals as well).
Fingers crossed that smug git Cameron won't be smiling in the morning, but I'm bracing myself for disappointment.
Every TV news programme seems to feature a selection of polls every day, with a selection of results, the one carried out by the Sun usually has the Tories with a clear lead, the Guardian one has the Lib Dem's almost level with the tories and others vary quite a lot.
I decided to poll work colleagues about the election, I currently work in South Basildon at a company with about 70% of the workforce being non European immigrants. Of the 30 or so people I asked only 15 expressed a preference or was willing to say so here is the almost independent poll of how people are going to vote.
Almost independent as I counted my vote (which turned out to be the only one for Labour sadly).
The election is just round the corner so probably time to write something.
My own political views probably don't make sense to many of you as when I was young I chose my allegiance and have no plans to change it, in the same way as in football I will always support West Ham despite them being a bit crap at the moment I will also support Labour despite them also being crap at the moment.
I remember getting really depressed in 1992 when for some reason the British public voted for a 4th term in office for the really crap Conservatives? I could never get my head round that one? how can so many people be fooled by reading Tory comics telling them who to vote for, don't people have minds of their own? 1997 came around and I finally got my Labour government although it really wasn't the Labour party that I had always supported just seemed like a watered down version of the Tories.
Thirteen years of new Labour hasn't been that great but I comfort myself by thinking what a disaster it could have been if the Tories had remained in power, I think Gordon Brown's biggest mistake was not calling the election a few years back when it was being hotly tipped he was going to, if he had he could have got out just in time before the banks crashed and the credit crunch took hold and we could have all blamed smarmy git Cameron for all the worlds problems.
That decision rates up with Scargill not having a legal vote for a strike at the beginning of the 1984 Miners strike when support for a strike was almost total and he would have walked it and hopefully would have led to the beginning of the end for the Thatcher government.
As for this election I was once again feeling depressed at the thought of the Tories taking power, I'm not a millionaire so what have they got to offer the likes of me? just 5 more years of the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, workers rights being eroded even more, public services being cut back to the bare bones so some fat cat can make even more money.
The recent TV debates have at least breathed some life into the whole process, I haven't seen them as I work 2-10 shifts and the thought of 3 more politicians talking bollocks for hours didn't inspire me to record it, but today’s superficial public seem to have been inspired by Nick Clegg for some reason.
I saw Clegg on a Sunday morning politics show a few weeks ago being ripped apart by an average interviewer and some selected public reading out basic questions, he fluffed about and looked totally ill at ease so assumed he would be crucified by Cameron and Brown but obviously they must have been even worse.
I am getting a feeling from talking to a variety of people that maybe the Liberals do have a chance? millions of people have probably considered them in the past for the simple reason they weren't Tory or Labour but didn't vote for them as with the current voting system it would be a wasted vote, but with the current image driven system a whole batch of "floating" voters might actually vote for Clegg and all those "would vote Liberal if they had a chance" type voters possibly will vote for them this time.
It's been nice recently that the usual smear campaigns run by the Tory press usually directed at Labour but now at Clegg have been treated with the disrespect they deserve and seem to have backfired.
My own vote will be Labour even though in my area it is definitely a wasted vote as the Tories have won Southend for ever, even during Labour landslides and despite the current Tory council being the most incompetent bunch we've ever seen.
The only Tory policy I liked was Cameron's speech about being able to sack your MP, so if the Tories do win I'll look forward to getting rid of that useless bastard David Amess who is probably more familiar to the people of the Maldives than those of us in Southend who never see him around here. Of course I know my chances of getting him sacked despite all his undeclared freebies are non existent.
Oh well roll on the 6th of May to see which bunch of crooks get the keys to number Ten, I'm sure I'll be disappointed whichever way it turns out, a hung parliament sounds good ..... get the Gallows ready.
My trip to work takes me down the A127 in Essex, over the last year average speed cameras have been installed from Southend to the outskirts of Basildon reducing the speed limit from 70mph to 50mph.
Without going into the rights and wrongs of that decision the one thing I'm always amused with is the amount of people who don't understand the concept of "average speed", every day I see drivers slowing down for the cameras then speeding up between them and slowing when they approach the next one.
I guess they're all bemused when the fine drops through their letterbox informing them they'd averaged 65mph.
I'm sure you all knew about the Facebook campaign to get Rage against the Machine to number one ahead of the latest X-factor winner Joe somebody for the Christmas number one.
As it turns out enough people bought the download and it made it, but it obviously wasn't thought out too well as rather than give Simon Cowell the "bloody nose" it's actually just made him a pile more money as both "artists" are on Sony/BMG.
A more worthy campaign doing the rounds is one to get the legend that is Jimmy Bullard onto the cover of the latest FIFA game.
Undoubted skill and personality but lacking a bit in the looks department, although Ronaldinho was on a recent one so that shouldn't matter.
Hopefully the great British public will get this one done too :)
A happy new year to anyone passing :)
My own hope is that the new year is going to be better than last year which rated as one of the shittest ones of my life.
On the upside I've been back at work for 6 weeks and the job although not paying well is pleasant enough and is giving me the opportunity to work my way out of the financial mire I've got myself into.
My wife's diability claim which had been turned down throughout my period of unemployment was finally approved after several appeals as they finally spoke to the doctors at the hospital who confirmed all we had written.
So despite the fact I'm working she qualifies for a disability living allowance which is nearly equal to our combined unemployment benefits we had been receiving for the last year? maybe they only approved it now as if we'd received it when I was out of work it would have made a living wage and discouraged me from finding employment.
So things financially at least are looking positive for 2010.
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