Have you ever really voted in a UK General Election?

When I went to vote this morning, as ever, my vote will mean nothing. In a completely safe Tory seat my vote makes no difference whatsoever. My other half thought hard before voting about who to choose and yet really, why bother?

Moreover, I am 39 and have had the following election history

1992 - too young by a year to vote
1997 - Just moved to USA from Leeds Central (would have been safe Labour seat anyway)
2001 - Voted, lived in Surrey Heath, the safest Tory seat
2005 - Voted, lived in Westminster, safe Tory seat
2010 - Voted, lived in Sevenoaks, safe Tory Seat
2015 - Voted, living in Sevenoaks, safe Tory seat

When there was a referendum for Alternative Vote I was dead against that form of voting and changing First Past The Post for what is a hodge podge system of AV.

Now though, with FPTP well and truly broken by the regionalisation of politics in the Country, we surely need to do something more. Even in this election only around 15 seats will change hands, one quarter of the amount available.

No wonder everyone is so bored when 75% of people have meaningless votes in any event.

Surely some of my readers have had a better time of it, or is my experience all too common?

SNP in Westminster - A changing perspective

Not so long ago Channel 4 made a useless documentary about how Farage and UKIP swept to power and were then abject and racist. What else to expect from such left-leaning media?

Yet fast forward just a couple of months and instead what do we see. A nationalist party poised to hold the balance of power in Parliament...only its not UKIP, its the SNP.

This present huge challenges to the UK media reporting. After all, they are near unanimous in their hatred of UKIP - even the right-wing press wants to support the Tories and the left wing just paint a bogeyman.

However the SNP are signed up communists and red to the core. I dhave not see Nicola Sturgeon's recent performances but no doubt they are the same as ever, help the poor, tax the rich, hate the Tories and all will be well with the help of the oil revenues magic money tree.

This is a message that always has a superficial appeal to many voters who are not troubled to think of how money and fortune are created nor of what the rewards for labour and fecklessness are in nature.

Together with the '45%' of voters in Scotland who voted for Independence, the SNP are well on course for 40-50 seats in Parliament. At that rate it is hard to see either a Tory or Labour majority as even possible. With 35 odd other seats going to the rest of the parties, this leaves only 575 for the two main partied to split - so around 285 each it would seem. With the Tory and Labour level pegging this is very much how the election is shaping up.

What will be fun is the Tories having slightly more votes and seats than Labour, but the SNP holding the balance and only working with Labour. An Ed Milliband minority Government with SNP support from Salmond and Sturgeon.

I can't see that lasting long and if so a second election will have an even freakier result for sure as English voters possibly plump for their own nationalist party to vote for.

What policies would a Labour-SNP coalition go for - surely there must be some real crazy stuff in their beyond a big extension of the mansion tax?

Election 2015 Update: The Capitalists choose their corner

Given the start of the short campaign is upon us, the editors of this site have spoken at last about the direction we want to take for the forthcoming campaign:

Cityunslicker, after siding with UKIP for much of the past Parliament argued strongly that a higher investment in infrastructure was needed with less of a focus on current spending. UKIP have no real policy in this area except to cut HS2. The Tory he sees economic policy is rose-tinted in the extreme.

Which is, after much deliberation, also Nick Drew's view. The Tory promise to create a surplus over the next 5 years is simply not credible given the refusal to advise on any real areas of further cuts in detail. Instead whimsical promises are made when we know that Local Government for example really has been cut to the bone.

Meanwhile, Mr Quango, has, as ever, decided which way the wind in blowing and considers the House of Lords reform least likely to happen under a Labour Government keen to fill Quango's and other pseudo-state apparatus with aligned placemen.

Taken together then we have come to the rather interesting, but entirely logical position of supporting Labour for the 2015 UK Election.

- Labour will avoid a damaging and silly attempt to leave the EU.

- Labour has plans to reduce expenditure in nicer way than the Tories and not to seek excessive tax cuts at the expense of the poorest in Society (i.e. the Scots)

- Labour are the only party really standing up to the crony capitalist oligopoly in the Country by attacking Banks, Energy Companies, Retailers who pay less than the minimum wage, Airlines and Media interests all in favour of standing up for the little guy. About time too.

We hope that you see it in your hearts to vote the right way come the May 8th Election and elect Ed Balls, easily the most impressive candidate for Chancellor, into the Treasury on May 8th.

Special Pleading Election Deluge - Police Neutrality

No readers will be surprised to here that as my email addy is freely accessible I get a fair few green ink emails and also plenty of media PR emails on a daily basis. It an easy move to the delete box for the vast majority.
 
Of late though the bombardment is reaching a crescendo, what is noticeable is that they are all of a left-wing bent, with a variety of special pleading causes and outrageous claims about the Government, which of course is Tories because the magic word is cuts. Let's take today's example from the Police Federation - my highlights where it made me raise and eyebrow:
 

We are now just six weeks away from the General Election. As an apolitical staff association representing 124,000 police officers from the rank of constable to chief inspector across the 43 forces in England and Wales, we are writing to all Members of Parliament.... to ensure the public get the police service they want and deserve.

But we have a duty, on behalf of those officers we represent and the public we serve, to raise our grave concern that the quality of service we are able to provide to the public is already under immense strain. We have a genuine fear that any future cuts to the police budget, or further loss of police officers, will have such a detrimental impact that the British police service, will be irreparably damaged and changed forever.

Importantly though, so too will our ability to protect and serve all our communities effectively....

The demands on policing continue to increase, as we tackle new crimes, while still trying to deal with traditional crime in the face of dwindling budgets and resources. In recent years we have seen an increase in cyber-crime, a rise in the number of reported cases of sexual offences and child protection issues. These horrific and often hidden crimes require sufficient time and resources to tackle properly. We also face a new style of international terrorism which is hugely resource intensive to monitor and police effectively to prevent attacks and keep the British public safe. In addition to dealing with crime, increasingly police officers are also providing active support to safeguard vulnerable members of society, including those who are young and old.

In the last four years the police service has lost nearly 17,000 police officers and approximately 22,000 police support staff, resulting in police officers having to backfill some of these roles. The number of police officers per head of population is lower than at any time in the last 20 years, while other European nations have increased their numbers.....

Several chief constables are now talking openly about the threat to visible neighbourhood policing teams as they juggle the emergency response demands against a limited budget and fewer police officers.....

To help you gain a better understanding of how the changes are impacting across all forces, last week we launched our 'Cuts Have Consequences' microsite....

This supports the admirable work being undertaken at a local level to highlight how budget cuts have impacted on policing. This is about bringing to your attention the very real unintended consequences of cuts to the police service. The unintended consequence to our resilience to be able to deal with the large scale disorder we saw in towns and cities only a few years ago as police numbers fall. The unintended consequence of not being able to deal with minor crimes as resources are diverted to deal with emergency response calls. The unintended consequence of neighbourhood policing teams being cut back as forces are compelled to channel limited resources to priority areas....

 

 

 

The apolitical nature of the call is no such thing, when the term 'cuts have consequences' is so clearly aimed at the Conservative party. Plus Senior Police officers are now apparently speaking out freely on this issue - during an election campaign. So much for neutrality.

 

Even better is the unintended consequences section - where fantasy scenarios are created and alleged to be unsolvable. I love the whole minor crimes piece, as if we don't know the Police have long given up on this sort of crime - if they ever did take it seriously which i cannot ever recall in my lifetime.

 

They did not send the email in green ink, but I thought it more appropriate to its content. Of course what I read is that there have been continuous falls in crime over the last 5 years and that huge savings have been made whilst overall crime has continued to fall significantly. Furthermore a big drain on the Police is politically inspired investigations to crimes that took place before I was born and are hard to prove at best or investigations against the media which again in many cases have proved groundless. How much did these cost us?

 

Anyway, I would not expect much better from a Union but this piece over-hyped, factually inaccurate, posits hypotheticals as reality and overall does a huge disservice to the Police who they claim to be representing.

Pre-Budget Tory choices

Is it too little too late for George Osborne? I mean the main idea in the budget seems to be raising the lower tax threshold which has been firmly associated with the Lib Dems. Osborne's main achievement on tax has been to lower the top rate from 50% to 45%. Overall, this is not good and is reflected in the Tories never having led in the polls since this set of changes was announced in the 2012 budget. Its cold comfort that it has equally affected the Lib Dems who are set for a form of electoral oblivion this year and next.

So what could the Chancellor do to make this different and what strategy to take. There are only 3 roads politically to choose:

One is to make some headline grabbing tax cuts or benefit rises as a blatant voter bribe. These though don't come in for a year and then that is very near the next election, probably too close for people to notice in their pay/benefits cheques.  Still, it might make Labour squirm a little as they will be left having to argue for higher taxes over and over which is boggy ground from which to try and advance.

Secondly, to take the long-term approach, realise that the deficit is still out of control and the macro-economy is still in a mess. Make a few changes, but with a neutral at best tax impact on the public finances. Some big announcements about things far in the future like HS2 etc that have no real impact on today's figures because there is no major spend this Parliament.

Thirdly, to start laying pure political traps for Labour now, really cutting back on Welfare and merging National Insurance into payroll taxes or changing the name of Employers NI. Make huge investment promises on airports, roads and rail that will need funding next Parliament but not major funding now, however jump-start them to begin in earnest in 2015. Move pensions and benefits back into line with RPI instead of CPI. Cut subsidies for Energy companies starting next year. Lower the headline tax rate and move the 40p threshold to £45,000. None of these ideas make much sense for the long-term benefit of the Country in terms of balancing its books (or even coming close), all though will prove anathema for Labour to reverse when they get into power and will make their 5 years very hard to make a success of economically.

So these are the 3 options, what will the Chancellor do? One, two or three?

Lib Dem implosion harms Cameron and destroys Coalition politics

The silly 'scandals' around the Liberal Democrat party - which whilst unpleasant would not be frontline new in a world where children are murdered and raped in Syria every day, were it not for a media inspired storm, are nonetheless putting the final bullets into a potential future Conservative Government.

The Tories have long been in a bad position electorally, their votes pile up in the South and nowhere else, leading them to have a large market share, but poor return under firs past the post. With Lib Dem votes now going to leave the yellow's that remaining parties will divvie up the votes.

As the protest party has beocme UKIP, since the LD's went into Government and the official opposition is the labour party it is not hard to see where the LD vote goes. Very little will flow to the Tory party - who are 8% behind in the polls anyway with just over a year to go to the election.

Who would have thought that when the Coalition was formed that it would be such an electoral disaster for both parties. The idea that we have another Coalition Government in the next few years is fanciful - the learning surely will be to try to lead a minority Government.

All that effort on trying to fix the economy for George Osborne has gone to waste.