Be Excellent To Each Other

Me too, and hey, me too! Let's be friends!


If you can remind me of even one that would be good. It's quite easy to get a timely swipe in at two people who are going at each other while ignoring you. You get to pick your route through their conflicting opinions to spout one that makes it look like you've got all the answers. Cleggmania was playing that tune last time, although sadly that didn't work out too well for him.

God yes, I need to go to sleep. And I should have been spending the last hour reading the last book in the long series of novels I've almost finished, damn you.

Ha! I'd have to watch it again to quote the details. But I've got a reasonably high threshold (or so I'd like to think) so they must have been semi decent points rather than just cheap dog whistle point scoring (or I'd have been cheering Ed again).

Clegg did well in the debates last time because he made bloody good sense. He then chucked that all away by betraying not only his principles but his party and his voters.

Christ don't put down a good book to talk bollocks to me man, go to bed!

I still feel sorry for Clegg. He did sound good last time, but I always thought he was too weak. In my eyes he's the very essence of the ideological left that had to face a hard reality when actually in a position of power. He's been the absolute kicking boy of the past five years as a result, and I think that's been quite unfair. But politics cares nothing for fairness or truth, whatever that is.

Can I just say, what a quality exchange guys, the clash of the titans indeed. Love it; for a fleeting instant it felt like the good old days, there.

Miliband spoke better than I've heard for a long time, but his continual use of 'I ask you at home' grated after the fifth or sixth time. Cameron seemed to be deliberately acting as if he was above all of it, going for the 'Prime Ministerial' look. I thought Clegg came across really well, and was very convincing even if at times he appeared to be pretending that he hadn't been in power for five years.

I felt sorry for the Plaid woman, who didn't seem to contribute much and, unlike Sturgeon, didn't even say what she had to offer to the rest of the UK.
Sturgeon made one or two good points, especially over the abolition of working visas for graduates, but I found her repeated statements that she wants us to be friends a bit false.

Didn't think much of the Green lady. Farage was playing the Shakespearen fool.

Thankfully, the audience were, until near the end, mercifully silent.

Not very enlightening, and I'm not sure anyone would change their vote just because of this..

They're a pretty irrelevant party, and their inclusion was just for consistency I think. They seemed to take the opportunity to say 'Vote for us in Wales!'.



Come on you old dog, let's hear what you thought

Meh. I haven't actually seen it yet, merely a few snippets and 'highlights' on the news.

I did try to watch on catchup, but was so aghast at the the veritable 'Wall of Stupid' that is ITV Player (Coronation Street, Bargain Hunter, Jeremy Kyle and TOWIE were the cerebral highlights), I had to bail out for the sake of my sanity. I might have the stomach for it later tonight.

Hey, if nothing else, I feel an awful lot better about paying the BBC Licence Fee.

I missed the first Scottish leaders' debate, but apparently the audience booed Sturgeon when she refused to rule out another referendum. Can't decide if I'll catch the second one or not, but the Scottish Tory leader, Ruth Davidson, is one of the most interesting and articulate female politicians I've seen in recent years - someone to watch in the future if she has to flee south to enter national politics.

Presumably she will be moved south if she's any good, given that being a Tory in Scotland is, thankfully, essentially pointless.

Noted electoral reform sceptics, the Tories, benefit from the proportional element of Holyrood's mixed-member system.

Aye here it is

About as pointless as being a Nationalist, but some people do like their petty delusions of grandeur.

a study!
Https://uk.news.yahoo.com/food-banks-ri ... 32216.html

Sign broken in Witney.

Also, Wessex Regionalist?

WESSEX OVER ALL

From their website



Also, from their FAQs:



Seems more reasonable than the bloke the Tories are putting up.

http://m.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/new ... andidates/

This is embarrassing

Seems more reasonable than more powers for Cornwall tbh. At least Wessex was one of the heptarchic kingdoms.

This country went downhill after Alfred died.

Another fun poll!

http://www.checktheirchoices.org.uk/

This one is about how you align with the way the party politicians have actually voted on issues in the past 5 years, and not on whether you agree with their promises for the future.

This is me.



Seems like all indicators point to me voting Lib Dem again..

Apparently I should lean more towards Labour and the Greens.

*drops mic*

Tory scum.

I strongly suspect that because I didn't choose the Business section that it's skewed it somewhat. Also the fact that a lot of the policies the Tories have implemented in the last five years have also been LD policies.

Hah! You bloody right-winger!

Am I missing something, but isn't giving housing association tenants the right to buy the house they are living in at a substantial discount a bad idea?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32295970

It doesn't address the high prices of housing - it just subsidises expensive homes, and then reduces the number of available HA stock to rent.

I think the policy could have been expressed better, as it should (in my understanding) increase the level of housing stock but the Tories being Tory focus on the 'owning your own home' dream.

If a HA has sold a property then there is nothing that it can do with that money other than to build or buy new property or refurbish property that it already owns as it has no shareholders to pass money to. So in theory a housing association having 20 flats in right to buy should be able to build another 20 (the cost of building a flat, even including the bare land, being about the same as the discounted sale value of the old one). I don't think that there can be a forced repatriation of funds to the council that founded the HA as they should be Arms length now.

This is, I think, quite distinct from right to buy in the 80's, where not only did this not happen, the rules on right to buy specifically prevented councils from using the proceeds to buy or build new property.

There was a Lib-dem(?) policy announced on Thursday , about a fund to give a £1500 loan for people who want to move out of home and into rented accommodation. The £1500 loan was for their deposit.

I don't think it's harsh to say that if you can't save up the £1500 deposit when you are living at home, then you have absolutely fuck all chance of being able to afford to rent your own place...

I'd argue that the Conservatives 'Help to Buy ISA' is worse. Save £12,000 and they'll add on £3,000 to allow you to fund a deposit on a house.

But you can only pay in £200 a month.

And the property can't cost more than £450k if its in London or £250k elsewhere. These thresholds being of fairly limited value, given that it is going to take you 5 years to 'save' your £15k deposit. And your £3k bonus is just about wiped out by the stamp duty cost.

That's certainly pointless and of very little benefit, but the right to buy changes seem actively harmful.

http://www.housing.org.uk/media/blog/ex ... tractions/



This is a cynical and populist policy. It's a shallow attempt to win votes that will only work in the short term. In the long term, much of this housing stock will naturally accumulate in the buy-to-let market, which is ultimately taxpayer funded subsidy (via housing benefit paid to the lower class) of middle-class people's second mortgages. It's a shit idea.

My second house is paid for by an eastern european immigrant couple. Take that, Farange!

Do you know if they are on housing benefit?

They're not. They both work full time at the nearby B&M warehouse. Very nice folks too. Lithuanian. Which I suppose is actually Northern Europe.

My wife went into B&M yesterday. I am mortified.

The Tory dream is to own a house someone else lives in who'll pay the mortgage for you with their benefits, actually.

can someone do the maths for me on this? This is a great idea.

Do what maths? You're just renting your house out but to DSS tenants; it's not like the numbers changes just because there's housing benefit involved.

is it capped? Is it guaranteed?

Note that housing benefit is available to people on "low incomes", not just the unemployed, and is calculated based on rental prices in your area. That means over a quarter of renters in London receive at least some housing benefit, because it's essentially impossible to rent anything in many parts of London if you don't earn well over minimum wage. That money flows directly to private landlords, of course; the unintended consequence of a benefit intended to help the working poor was that it further inflates a housing bubble that only benefits the rich.

So the actual landlord gets the same no matter what, it just depends how much comes from the government and how much from the renter?

Stance - corrected. I'm guessing the HA must have to repatriate the 'transfer in' value to the LA out of the proceeds, which fucks up that metric.

Which in theory makes it doubly cynical - LA proceeds from right to buy on HA properties keeping the lid on council tax/general taxation for a few years as we measure deficit in terms of cash and debt, not assets.

Jesus, that lip sync was awesome.

Not sure if I'll watch 'Ed Miliband v the World' tonight. With the exception of Farage, he's only likely to be attacked from one side, and I fear it might turn into one of those oh-so-tedious undergraduate debates about 'who's the most left-wing'.

Without the incumbent, what's the actual point?

Quite. It could benefit Miliband by making him appear Prime Ministerial, able to take tough decisions, and keep his nerve under fire, but other than that I can't see much positive from it.

Of course, I have nothing against Miliband and Labour being grilled on their policies and approach to government, but then I also want the Tories to face that too. And we'll let Mr Clegg do the half-time show.