Tag: Conservatives

EU elections – whom do I vote for?

2019 EU Elections

My choice is between the Lib Dems and the new Change UK group.

The Lib Dems have two things going for them:

  1. They have established brand recall, grass roots membership and party organisation,
  2. They performed the best (relative to past) of all the parties in the recent council elections.

If the council elections are a barometer, the Remain voters seem to be widely voting for Lib Dems. Combined with a relatively better established party organisation, this gives them the best chance, of the Remainer parties, of winning seats in the European parliament.

The Change UK party has one thing going for it – hope of a moderate, centrist contender.

Voting for them is a sending a message to the moderates in both parties that there’s a third way. A strong message on this may be more important as the Tories get ready to tilt further to the right once they rid themselves of their stubborn leader, and Labour shows no sign of recovering from its hard-left capture.

If Change UK win a decent percentage of the vote—and this election may be more about vote shares as a signal than the number of short-lived MEPs—then it may encourage more of the moderates in both main parties to speak up, or defect to the CUK.

I’m split. Should I…

  • Vote for a party that has the better chance of winning a probably inconsequential MEP seat, or
  • Vote for a party that has little chance of winning now, but has a chance at becoming a stronger, better force if enough people are seen voting for them?

What does Cameron smoke He doesn’t get how…

What does Cameron smoke?

He doesn’t get how social media works. His government can’t figure a policy to tap the social media for better intelligence and riot control. He and his top colleagues don’t bother with it. So, when rioters use it for communication, in stead of tapping in and harnessing social media, he responds like any autocrat would – ‘block them when needed.’

Then he goes out and claims that it was the return & presence of him and his top ministers that got the riots under control. Yes, they were patrolling the streets in their superhero capes while the police were hiding in their stations. This comes from a prime minister who didn’t face the public in presence of media lest the heckling be telecast publicly. The police, the opposition and, now, even most of the public realise that the police numbers on streets of London are already low and cannot be reduced further. He, however, prefers to cut them further and instead wants them to ‘update their policing techniques’.

Well, there are only so many ways for the police to react when they are outnumbered 20-to-1 by rioters on the street. One is what they did – abandon some areas and protect others. Another is to go the way of middle eastern authorities – baton charges, water cannons, rubber bullets, tear gas, and, if nothing else works, live ammunition. Or, perhaps, they could just offer the PM and his top colleagues to the rioters as hostages and peace will return. I prefer the 1st one, but if that doesn’t work, I’d rather have option 3 before the 2nd one.

What London needs is a continuance of its low-force, community policing policies. What it also needs is more boots on the ground, not conservatives in power cutting the good services in the country.

Finally, I’m tired of this PM shouting from the rooftops that everyone needs to take responsibility for their actions, coming as it does from the fella who refused to take any responsibility in l’affair Murdoch for a long time despite pressure from all sides.

I can understand the frustrations of youth from…

I can understand the frustrations of youth from poor neighbourhoods in a govt led by elitist, rich white men.

What I can’t understand is how destroying buses and looting small businesses in poor neighbourhoods improves their lot.

Protest, yes. Go out and stage a march of thousands outside the parliament every day till the government relents.

Rioting & looting, no. Just NO.

BBC-F1-Sky!

The culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, described the deal as “tough but fair” and reassured the BBC’s commercial rivals that it would no longer be used to “blast them out of the water”.

In other words, Msr Hunt apologizing to the masters in Sky and offering them F1 coverage as a peace-making present after the NI-BSB deal got scuppered.

Further, what I don’t get is why keep half the races? If they were sharing the other half with a free to air channel like ITV, I could get the idea but in the current deal, BBC is just acting as a teaser for Sky – we’ll lure them in with half the races free and then you sign them up for the other half!  Heck, instead of paying £33m, BBC should be getting paid by Sky for generating subscriptions. But then that wouldn’t go down too well at the next conservative-NI-Sky dinner party, would it?

I have Sky at home and still hate this deal. I love the presenting team on BBC and will be distraught if that is split up, as seems likely from Martin Brundle’s tweet. Yet another reason for me to say – Screw you Conservatives!

Out.

P.S.: The Hunt quote is from here.

NotW is no more Whattay brilliant move by…

NotW is no more.

Whattay brilliant move by The Empire – the subject of all that bad publicity disappears, the key people in the publication are safe, Dave Cameron gets something to present as outcome of his tough talk … and, eventually, get rewarded for their swift corrective action with the ownership of BSkyB.

As for the other media organisations making a big thing out of this, they were clearly warned by Dave Cameron yesterday when he announced that the new enquiries will focus on behaviour of not just NotW but all media organisations in the country. Barely a veiled threat from a PM who has one ex-head of NotW as his personal head of media relations and another as his close friend and neighbour.

I doubt if Ed Mill shouting from the rooftops can do anything to hurt the Conservative-NewsCorp alliance.