Not Diana Watch Because I am Away.

So is it really that bad? Coalition Government I mean not Britain’s Got Talent which we already know is shit.


I was a bit rude about Nick Clegg last week because he had sold out (there is nothing worse then your favourite band’s tunes turning up on an advert) and I still sort of think that but I am willing to give it a bit more time.

The 12 page agreement between to parties was published and, reading through it, (yes I have done that) it’s not that bad. Yes we have had to take a few hits, the Mansion Tax is gone (which is good because it was a little arbitrary) and so is the idea about thinking about replacing Trident with something else but over all, ok.

You can look at this way; we have a Conservative Government that will enact some LibDem policies, try and accentuate the positive (there should be a song about that).

No ID cards, the National Identity Register, the next generation of biometric passports and the Contact Point database, gone. Even Liberty are pretty happy. Think about that people, Liberty are happy with the proposals of a Conservative (with a little help from those nice LibDems) government on Civil liberties. I think Labour may have gone a little far.

Jury Trials protected, outlawing the finger printing of children, extension of the Freedom of Information Act, restoration of right to non violent protest and an end to detention of children in immigration cases. These are all good things.



The economy plans are not the worst thing I have ever seen either. There are some spending cuts that we aren't overly comfortable with but they are going to raise the starting rate of income tax to £10,000, who idea was that?

There will be an increase in Capitol Gains tax, whose idea? Closing of tax loopholes, our idea.

The Tories have dropped their plans to increase the threshold for Inheritance Tax which would have only helped about 3000 of the richest families in the country, I imagine under pressure from the yellow party.

Pupil Premiums, LibDem idea. The Tories seem to have forgotten that they won't to get rid of the 50% top tax bracket, I wonder why?

Oh and who is now in charge of the those nasty bankers who fucked us over, ruined the World's economy and cost thousands of people their jobs, that would be Liberal Democrat Vince Cable (The least comfortable LibDem in the Team photo).

Oh, on a bit of a photographic tangent, Danny Alexander (The new Scottish Secretary) and Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age front man) separated at birth? Have you ever seen them in the same room together?

 

I’m sure you can tell which one is which, just.

There is also a little more cunning about us than many would have expected. Yes, we may have been talked into dropping our commitment to “no more Nuclear” but do you know who is Minister for Climate/Environment, why that would be Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne. He has made a commitment that there will be no Government subsidy for the building of new nuclear. This means that, due to the fact that Nuclear power stations are really, really expensive, the likelihood is that they won't be built. Not so naive now are we.

My long and rambling point is that we really should give it time. I know that it is not what we wanted but I think we are going to have to settle for it.

As I've said before, this is just about the worst situation for Nick Clegg to have placed in, everything he could have done would have been wrong.

Please don't think that I have gone soft, I understand that there are xenophobes, racists and homophobes in the Tory Party, some in the Cabinet, I'm looking at you Theresa May (not Teresa May though, very different woman) who voted against repeal of section 28 and equality for the age of consent. She voted against Gay adoption and failed to attend all four votes that lead to the Gender Recognition Act but we have the chance to dilute these idiots, to educate them as they seem to operate from a massive field of ignorance.

There are problems but it might just work.

Diana Watch

I don’t want to know that the Tories are back in power, yes it is good for comedy, art and music (especially punk and folk) but for the rest of us, who don’t earn several million pounds a year, it is really bad news. In order to counter act this slight set back in my life I will be approaching the following few years thus,

The only harm will be a slightly soar back and some sand in the ears, although I might get shafted and not know who it was, at least you lot will see them coming.

23% of the vote and 8% of the seats, tell me how this is fair?

I’m not going to moan on and on about the election and the inherent unfairness of the First Past The Post electoral system but it is bloody tempting, mostly because that is all that our newspapers and websites have been full of all week. It’s been hard to find anything else to bring you. Although, maybe just one little mention of a “politician”,

The Award for Most Shameless Publicity Stunt on Election Day,

Can this go to anyone else but Nigel Farage?

He managed to get a pilot to crash a light aircraft containing the hypocritical xenophobe that was pulling a “Vote UKIP” banner in order to draw attention to his cause of trying to beat John Bercow. That is dedication an ideal. Would you get that from Gordon Brown or David Cameron? I think not and I know you definitely wouldn’t get it from Nick Clegg.

The Award for Most Predicable Story/Group of Offended People of the Week,

The new Chris Morris film “4 Lions” has come out this week to pretty good reviews from the critics and howls of protest from people just looking to be offended.

I have written before about how great I think Chris Morris is and what better way to remove the basic threat of Terrorists (whose purpose is to terrorise) than to laugh at them, you can read it here (although it does seem to be in an odd font).

I wrote it because the Daily Mail was already offended by the trailer but now to be added to the group of people offended by a film about stupid attempted terrorists are a group claiming to represent survives of the London 7th of July bomb attacks (with a little help from the Daily Mail and currently pathetic BBC who gave them time on News 24).

They would like the film banned. I have 2 questions here, 1, does this group represent all of those who survived or lost loved ones? And 2, have they even seen the film?

Their basic problem seems to be that the 4 main characters of the film are from Yorkshire (as were the 7/7 bombers) and they travel to London to blow something up, one of their suggested targets is “The Internet” but instead end up dressed as giant furry animals in order to attack the Marathon. Where else would they go in England to make a blowy up splash? “Today a bomb went of in Merthyr Tydfil and caused £8.42 worth of damage”.

Really, is that it? Because the bombers are from Yorkshire? Bloody hell, it’s easy to piss you off isn’t it.

And whilst I'm at it, what right do you have to ask for things to be banned because you don't like it? I don't like most films or Television programs and find an awful lot of them offensive, mostly for their poor writing or general rubbishness, but that doesn't mean that I have the right to try and get them banned you self-important fool.

The Award for Best Bit of Direct Action of the Week,

I like this story for 2 reasons, 1, It is simple and effective action and 2, it is happening right here, right now in Dorset.

The village of Chideock is on the A35 and it's a bloody awful road. It is narrow and it is windy and it is the main road between us and Devon. The very high levels of traffic that this entails renders this, rather pretty, village less than pleasant to live in, especially during the summer. Step up to the plate Tony Fuller, a man with a very simple plan.

The villagers would like some sort of bypass but their pleas are being ignored so they needed some sort of attention grabbing but legal stunt with which to register their miffedness. Mr Fuller came up with a plan that utilises their pre-existing infrastructure or the village Pelican Crossing, as some may call it.

He, and other residents, spend an hour using the crossing constantly. He said “If they all turn up and they each press that button once, one after the other, that's 50 times that traffic will be stopped and it will cause chaos. Because they've only gone across once each, they can't be prosecuted for using the crossing that was put there for their benefit.” They caused a 4 mile tailback in no time. Genius.

The Award For Taking the Term “Animal Husbandry” To Literally,

A Germany man has, sort of, married his cat (damn that was a pretty tortured and poor set up for a joke.)

There really is no point for this story. A German man, whose cat is dying, paid an actress to carry out the service.

He loves his cat, I get that, and she’s not well, again I understand, but why “marry” it? How will that help?

The Award For Actually Making A Reasonable Point But Managing To Loose It In A Massive Cloud Of Rhetorically Bullshit,

Now, I'm no fan of Iran or its slightly “zany” leader but it seems that it President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have had a point when he addressed a UN meeting to review the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. He said “The sole purpose of nuclear weapons is to annihilate all living beings and to destroy the environment. The nuclear bomb is a fire against humanity rather than a weapon for defense. . . . The possession of nuclear bombs is not a source of pride; their possession is disgusting and harmful.” I can't argue with that.

Obviously he went on to complain about pretty much everything else and called for the US to be removed from the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency for "threatening non-nuclear states", this, in turn, caused a rather childish response for the American, French and British, who walked out. I assume that they were heading for the high moral ground.

He says that Iran is developing nuclear power stations and we say that he is trying to build bombs. We don’t believe him but I feel that if he told the US that the sky was blue some on the Right would accuse him of lying.

Again we have this problem, we tell the rest of the world that they can’t have Nuclear Weapons whilst our politicians (except the LibDems) want to replace Trident and Western countries all ignore Israel’s weapons (and for balance those of Pakistan, India and North Korea). I do find this level of hypocrisy staggering.

See, virtually no politics and only awards because I think we all need a little cheering up after the disappointment of Thursday/Friday.

65% of those eligible to vote did so on Thursday and only 35% of those people voted Tory, so only 22.75% of those that could, voted for the party that is in charge (probably). Not really a ringing endorsement. 77.25% of the electorate either don’t vote for or voted against them.

Hope you all have a lovely week. I’m not sure if I will be able to do this next week as we are off to visit Significant Other’s Grandma and Sister as it is both of their birthdays.

Vote LibDem? Maybe? Please? Just Think About It.

So tomorrow is Election day, vote-agedon if you like, and I would ask you to go out and vote but before you do consider these points.

 You can, of course, vote for who you like and I'm pretty sure that I would no influence over you decision at all but that isn't going to stop me trying. I would ask you to considering voting Liberal Democrat.

 Now some of you will be having a rather significant knee jerk reaction to this but have you thought about it properly? If you are the reader of a Tory newspaper then you will have been told that a Hung parliament would be a disaster for the country and the economy. Their argument is that the credit rating agencies (they said that derivatives were fine you know) would down grade us from a AAA investment and that the markets would hate it. This is untrue. Did you know that of the 16 countries that have AAA rating - 10 have hung parliaments, 12 use system of PR So it is a lie, scaremongering if you will.

 There is also the point that do you think that your decision should be influenced by international money men? People that have no interest in our country and only in your money?

 Let us consider the really big issue, the Economy. Whose fault is it that we are in the situation were it is (maybe) necessary to have massive cuts in Public Spending and that we had a recession? That would be the Tories and Labour. 

  The Tories removed most of the regulation for banking, such as the separation of high street banks and investment banks, and Labour didn't put it back. Labour decided on “light touch” regulation of the City which lead to the Banks becoming to big to fail. Everyone invested in derivatives and many other forms of incredibly complicated financial products, with our money, so that when the failed it effected every economy in the world. Governments, who up until that point were all for independence for the markets and not getting involved, suddenly found themselves forced to bail out private companies. They had lost our money and because of this they had to helped with our money. I am not criticizing Private companies or the Government Bailouts (they had no choice), I am merely pointing out the facts.

 The recession was caused by foolish investments by companies that were allowed to hold Governments to ransom by those very Governments.

The Tories and Labour both have many friends in the City and are only proposing light, cosmetic changes to Banking regulation. Not the LibDems. They want to bring back the separation of High Street and Investment Banks. With this they can let large investment banks fail if they get themselves into trouble because they won't take huge swathes of the economy with them.

 Fairer Tax policies as well. The rich, as they can afford it, should pay more and no income tax on the first £10,000 you earn. The Tories want to change Inheritance Tax in order to help the 3000 richest families in the Country, are you one of those families? If so, vote Tory, if you are not, think about who they will run the country for.

They also support Mutuals, Co-operative and Credit Unions.

On Trident the LibDems don't want to replace it with something that is exactly the same. This will be needed in 20 years time but it is out of date now. It is a Cold War system in a post Cold War World. Why do we need an independent Nuclear Deterrent anyway? Who is deterred? Did it deter other countries from building Nuclear Weapons? I think you will find that that is a no. If anything it probably encouraged them to.

 The threats that we face today are not from other Countries or States but from Terrorist organisations. Did all of America's nuclear might deter Osama Bin Laden and his pilot friends from attacking New York? How about the London Bombers, were they put off by our lovely submarines? No, no they weren't. It is an awful lot of money for just making some uninformed people sleep well in their beds whilst not actually protecting them.

On immigration their policies are the ones that stands out the most. Those that complain about foreigners coming over here and taking our jobs should ask themselves this, would you pick lettuces for minimum wage? Or how about clean toilets, gut fish or pack meat? If we did these jobs ourselves then maybe we wouldn't need outside assistance.

Another example of a this is within the NHS. Many years ago the NHS went to the rest of the World to ask them for some nurses. Why was this? It was because they had to. The Tory government had cut funding for nurses training and were paying them a pittance so we didn't have any nurses.

The rest of the World bailed us out so now I think they deserve a little gratitude. Labour and the Tories say deport all illegal immigrants, interesting proposal but they don't know where they are. That's sort of the point about being here illegally, you have a tendency to hide. The LibDems propose an amnesty on these people. Get them registered and paying tax. If they are here illegally they are not claiming benefits because they can't, so they must be doing something to support themselves. They are working. A lot of the time they are working for gang masters who barely pay them and treat them badly. Why not utilise these people and make their lives better at the same time.

We also have to admit to ourselves that with a rapidly ageing population we are going to need some imported young people to do the work and pay some tax so that we can pay for our care homes, unless, of course, we think that Government mandated minimum family sizes is a good thing? How would the Daily Mail feel about the Government telling you to have at least 3 children?

 They are the only Party with proper green policies, a proper feed-in tariff for micro-generators. Setting aside extra money for schools who want to improve the energy efficiency of their buildings. They will pay back the loan over time from energy savings, creating a rolling fund to help insulate every public building. Investing £400 million in refurbishing Northern Shipyards so that they can make wind turbines. Investing £140 million in a bus scrappage scheme that helps bus companies to replace old polluting buses with new, accessible low carbon ones and creates jobs.

There are many other very good reason to vote LibDem, have a read of the manifesto here, such as a proper relationship with Europe, smaller class sizes, ring-fenced science funding, grown up, evidence based drug policies, tackling tax avoidance and evasion, scrapping the IT card scheme, restoring the link between State Pensions and earnings, Winter fuel payments to be extended to the severely disabled, I could go on but it would bore you, (that is assuming that you are not bored already) all I would ask is that you give serious consideration to voting Liberal Democrat tomorrow.

 I understand that this is not my most well formed arguement or snappily written piece but it is truely what I passionately believe. Please don't be scared into to voting for someone that you don't really like because of newspaper headlines or Politicians trying to scare you, vote for what you believe.