The Coffee House Wall – 4th/10th

Posted on May 4, 2015

This is the Coffee House Wall for this week. I won’t say that it is your chance to communicate with us, as we are all in this together. It is, nevertheless, the Conservative Blog post that has no particular theme, and where everything is on topic. Let’s just remember that we want to avoid ad hominem attacks on others. We don’t want to engage with trolls. We want to moderate our language ourselves as responsible and mature adults, choosing to use fruity language only where it is necessary. This is our opportunity to show what the Spectator Coffee House Wall could have been like.

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235 thoughts on “The Coffee House Wall – 4th/10th”

  1. I have heard that who the gods wish to destroy they first drive mad. Trouble is the Three Stooges are sending us mad. Now Miliband has a stone engraved with his intentions. Let it be a millstone around his neck!

  2. It’s noticeable how stealthy all the new taxes are. The ‘convenient’ digital switch for car tax has in fact been used to massively rip off the public:

    Scrapping car tax discs triggers ‘£38m double-charging windfall’ as both buyers and sellers are forced to pay for same month

    http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-3067185/Scrapping-car-tax-discs-delivers-38m-double-charging-windfall.html

    It’s a story that illustrates why you should keep digital money purchaes to a minimum. They tell you it’s convenient. It is. For them to rip you off. They do it on the internet by charging different prices for goods to different customers.

    I am told court fees in England and Wales have gone up by 600% – another stealth tax. God help you if you commit even the tiniest driving offence, you will pay almightilty through the wallet for it.

    And it seems university tuition fees will go up again after the election.

    The three stooges didn’t tell you in this campaign that the country is broke and that they will be dreaming up all sorts of weird and wonderful ways to rip you off. They daren’t do it through your pay packet. It’s better instead to fleece you in one handy lump sum!

    And to pay for what? For what’s marching through Libya and across to Calais. Charming!

  3. Senior Labour figures face backlash after segregating women from men at rally

    FIVE senior Labour Party figures faced a furious backlash last night after giving a talk at a meeting where women appeared to be banned from sitting with men.
    Now the bastard isn’t Moses, with the Tablets, he is Mohammed and become a bloody Moslem.

  5. For those of you who like to keep an eye on what the Bilderbergers are plotting, I have thought all through this spring that the delay on Greece deadlines was to get the world banking system past the UK general election.

    The reason being that so much money is laundered through the City of London financial district. If the Greek fall-out were to happen before the election, UKIP woud win even more votes, because the City will be in the middle of a xxxxstorm if Greece goes and all that xxxx will go on the sovereign balance sheet, not the banksters’ balance sheet and everyone in the UK will be worked to the bone to pay for it. So the Bilderbergers want their City of London laundering hub left safe in the arms of LabCon, the supporters of the EU who bring the banksters the kind of global federal control they need. Leave it in the arms of the legacy parties and all the debt will all go on the sovereign balance sheet.

    So something wicked this way comes if the Greeks grow the balls to say: ‘We’re out – and, no, the sky won’t fall on heads because of it.’

    And if you think I fantasise about the global banksters keeping the City of London sacred, then pray tell me, why is the UK central bank being run by a Canadian staright out of Goldman Sachs?

    Because he was ‘the best man for the job’? If you believe that, you believe Gideon Osborne.

    https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2015/05/04/greece-crisis-new-shocker-as-eurozone-caught-exposing-itself-to-british-voters/

  10. Vis a vis, observations yesterday on the Mail on Sunday banning its most famous columnist from publishing a column, I keep watching Peter Hitchens’ blog to see what he says when he comes back. I am expecting something cheeky to be written like ‘I am glad to to be with you again…’ or ‘Normal service resumed… or ‘How nice to be with you again..’

    Whatever the case, Hitchens is spitting feathers and so, not allowed to write in the present, he has posted up two more Golden Oldies all about the Tories and the arguments he put in them, he says, are still valid.

    Golden Oldies 2: What I wrote five years ago

    Some readers might like to see again the column I wrote for the Mail on Sunday almost exactly five years ago.

    01 May 2010 11:30 PM

    This is the most important article I’ve ever written – and loyal Conservative voters will hate me for it

    This is Peter Hitchens’ Mail on Sunday column

    http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2015/05/golden-oldies-2-what-i-wrote-five-years-ago.html

    Golden Oldies 3: My riposte to the ‘Vote UKIP get Red Ed’ argument
    The Tories are still useless, and if you really want to get Labour out, you should not vote Tory

    Originally published October 2007, and still valid

    http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2015/05/golden-oldies-3-my-riposte-to-the-vote-ukip-get-red-ed-argument.html

  11. And that was why Melanie Phillips was asked to leave the Daily Mail. She has never, ever been a Tory, although she kept that quiet in the Mail (she was more vocal about it in her much-missed blog – ho, ho what fun that was -while it lasted!).

    The Rothermeres and Dacre just could not have that as the UKIP army gathered strength. She used to turn up of a morning and trounce the ghastly LibLabCon cartel for six and that was too much.

    So off to the Blairite hinterlands of The Times she was sent, where she sits all chained up surrounded by bien pensanters. Don’t think she’s chained up like Peter Hitchens?

    Well, she too was allowed to go on holiday in the middle of this campaign: ‘Off you go, Mel, we don’t want you writing too much when there’s an election on.’ And since she’s been back, she wrote a piece on Russia (nothing on the UK election, a piece onf the NHS from a social affairs point of view (not from a UK election point of view) and today a piece on the global warming fraud and the Vatican. Yes, yes, yes, all very well and valid.

    But the point is she was told by her editors not to be near this election. Now, pardon me, but with an election on, what would someone like Melanie Phillips normally be writing about?

    It’s the elephant in the room. Only Mel’s not writing about it. And Peter Hitchens has been censored by his own employer.

    They’re frit of something folks. But I don’t really think the public take their cues from Pete and Mel, fun though they can be.

    I think th reason for UKIP’s rise and the Tories demise is that people know but one thing: never, ever to trust them again.

    Amazing, astonishing behaviour.

  12. Well at least the American Muslims are not rioting in the streets because them cops killed our brothers.

  13. They do have their quaint cultural ways, don’t they:
    Radical Islamists death threats to ‘liberal’ British school teachers on increase
    DEAD animals are being left at school gates and teachers are getting death threats because the ‘Trojan Horse’ school scandal refuses to go away, a headteacher has claimed.
    “Sarah Hewitt-Clarkson, head of Anderton Park School in Birmingham, said: “Trojan Horse has not gone away. Those of us who were involved, we knew it was the tip of the iceberg.
    “We still have dead animals hung on the gates of schools, dismembered cats on playgrounds. We have petitions outside schools, objecting to teachers teaching against homophobia.”
    Ms Hewitt-Clarkson said she had been targeted after campaigning to stop homophobic bullying, getting death threats on Facebook saying ‘any headteacher who teachers my children it’s alright to be gay will be at the end of my shotgun.’
    She also said that the bodies of dead animals – including a dismembered cat – had been left at her school.
    Anderton Park was one of a number of schools where governors tried to impose an ‘Islamic agenda’.”
    http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/574789/Trojan-Horse-Birmingham-death-threats-Islamism
    These people are upholding the politically correct agenda with, apparently, very little support from the politically correct establishment!
    If they don’t get any support, normal life will disappear.

  14. Two Soups May 4th, 2015 – 18:30

    “And that was why Melanie Phillips was asked to leave the Daily Mail. She has never, ever been a Tory”

    If she is not a Tory, what else can she be?

    She can not be anything other tha a Tory.

  15. Two Soups – 13:19
    We have been told that, soon, new cars will radio its position if it sustains a crash: so easy to upgrade to continual monitoring.

  18. Most Seats

    The latest bookmakers odds on this election.

    Conservatives 2/9

    Labour 4

    Any Other

    1000

    View all odds

    Green Party

    1000

    View all odds

    UKIP

    1000

  20. David Ossitt – 19:39
    UKIP don’t need the most seats for it to be revolutionary, but the more the merrier, I’d say! In fact, one particular poster under Delers’ article is correct, every vote counts!

    I have recently seen a UKIP poster (paper, not human) pinned up in Llanelli, South Wales. It says, you have had a Labour MP since 1922, just four of them, in fact, and look where that has got you? It has then listed the evidence of failure, not only by Labour in Westminster but also in the Welsh Assembly.

    These Kippers get everywhere – we will see very soon just how far. 🙂

  21. David Ossitt 1939:
    What I cannot understand is this.
    The only red line I have heard Cameron articulate is the need for a Referendum on Europe.
    The raison d’être for UKIP is a Referendum on Europe.
    Why on earth could they have not sunk their differences before the current shambles and then the Labour Party would be buried on Thursday.

  23. David, hand on heart, Melanie Phillips has never, ever been a Tory!

    She is interested in social conservatism but I think that departed company from the Tory party probably before she was even born. So I think you could call her a social conservative, but not a Conservative, and no, not a Tory, a label I have seen her reject outright in print.

    Melanie Phillips describes herself as a true progressive:

    http://www.melaniephillips.com/why-i-am-a-progressive

  24. Portendorfer
    May 4th, 2015 – 19:55

    The Tory party will not offer a referendum on Europe. It will pretend, as it did last time to offer a referendum on Europe, and then find some lawyerly small print way to say, sorry, I can’t do that. See past writings of Peter Hitchens and Melanie Phillips for categorial details.

  25. Interestingly enough, David, in the same way that the Tory party wants to fool its ex-voters into thinking it is socially conservative, I think the Mail likes to try to fool its readers into thinking it is socially conservative and so it hires people like Melanie Phillips and Peter Hitchens as shock absorbers, but then puts them in the cupboard if they think they detract too much from slavish loyalty to the Tory party.

  26. Two Soups – 20:31 ‘The Tory party will … pretend’
    Portendorfer – 19:55
    David Ossitt – 19:39:

    Just to expand on your post 🙂 :

    When CMD won the ‘leadership’ of the Tory Party, against Davis, I thought that he had persuaded several, or more 🙂 , MPs that he was Eurosceptic.

    I have NEVER, EVER, since that moment, seen one molecule of Euroscepticism from him; there were always other non-British, or even un-British interests to be considered. Personal motivation is behind any sincere action, and if he had had ANY empathy, he would not, around 2006, have called Kippers a bunch of “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists”.

    If he had had any intelligence, if he had had any knowledge of keeping the potential customer interested, he would not have done it. If he had any capable advisers, they would have advised against it! He should have known how angry we were at those throwing away what our forefathers had toiled to give us and our descendants. Instead of gathering information, which is a fundamental task of politicians, he abused the Kippers.

    Once bitten, shame on him, twice bitten, shame on me! Where many Tories think UKIPers are now, I think I was there two elections ago. Howard had to deal with Blair, but Cameron should have walked it in 2010.

    This time he should walk.

  27. … and CMD still supports the growth of windmills and the de-industrialisation of Britain, etc, etc, etc!

  29. Does anyone believe this drivel in The Times?

    Only one party will tackle the Islamist threat
    by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

    David Cameron recognises that Britain faces a battle of ideas, not just of preventing terror

    “With the general election two days away, as many as four in ten voters are still undecided. I believe the choice is an easy one. They should vote to keep David Cameron in No 10 because of his determination to tackle the scourge of Islamic extremism in Britain.
    Radical Islam is the issue that dare not speak its name in this election. Voters say they regard the NHS, immigration and the economy as the three most important issues facing Britain. Islamic extremism does not even make the top ten. To anyone watching from abroad, this seems bizarre.”

    http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4430554.ece

    Cameron has been the PM for nearly five years, and this most important issue has only just been mentioned!

    Yet another reason for not voting Tory! CMD only bombed Libya to liberate the muslims, and look how that turned out!

  30. RobertC

    “He should have known how angry we were at those throwing away what our forefathers had toiled to give us and our descendants.”

    Cf. the USA:

    “What we’re finding out is that, and it sounds slightly over-dramatic but isn’t at all, unless we are willing to fight and die to win back the freedom our forefather’s fought and died to secure for us and all future generations we will continue to feel our chains grow heavier and shorter. ”
    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-04/one-mans-message-americans-start-giving-damn

    What are the odds that CMD is bought and sold on a PAP basis – payment after performance? Why are there no investigative reporters investigating this kind of possibility – or are the bankers falling out of windows last year an indication that there were but they were frustrated in continued access to their sources?

    Will CMD incorporate a charitable company? Will he become a European Union Commissioner? Will he be appointed to solve the Palestinian problem? Will he be made a consultant to an Ukrainian oil company where his skills in the field can best be deployed? The opportunities for an ex-Prime Minister today are unlimited.

    Oh, wonder!
    How many goodly creatures are there here!
    How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
    That has such people in ’t!

  31. How do you create a website?

    You need a computer to host it on. Hosting companies lease computers for use as web servers. The web server stores your text and files. The computer usually runs an operating system called Linux or Freebsd. The computer is very powerful and it can be controlled with text commands. You can log in from the other side of the world and have control over your website. The program for web hosting is called Apache. Once your computer has been set up you can buy a domain name such as screwtape666.com, nathanmandyinmontenegroindonesia.com, or royjenkinsconservatives.com. Then you point the domain to your server.

    Plain text doesn’t have a large file size. It can be stored or copied easily.

    Obviously you can pay a computer science student or graduate to do the computer work for you.

    Keywords: linux, apache, domain name, web hosting, plain text, minimal text based website.

  32. Monday’s Alex Jones Show has a stimulating analysis of the Garland Texas muslim shootings near the event where Geert Wilders was speaking and brings Michael Savage in as a guest. So two conspiracy theorists are available for the price of one. Also invited for interview is retired US Army Intelligence Officer Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer. He is of course another conspiracy theorist and has some wacky, baseless ideas. Indeed the show is packed wall to wall with conspiracies or at least theories of possible conspiracies a fantasy time for everyone. Very different from the BBC or CNN which broadcast all the news and opinion that’s fit to print without taint of government bias.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc8cBndfPDI

    What would come as a breath of fresh air in British news broadcasting? More CNN or more Alex Jones?

  34. Hey, malevolence, I wrote “the conspiracy theory websites you favour” in the specific context of the four books cited about the Vietnam war. I didn’t write that conspiracy theories were ALL wrong.

    You achieved what you wanted which is a period of welcome silence from me.

    So pack it in you “malicious little sh*t” (© Damaris Tighe) and stop being so puerile and boring.

  35. Malfleur – 00:17
    “Why are there no investigative reporters investigating …” ANYTHING, apart from non-political personalities’ historical sex abuse claims?

    The Global Warming Hoax could easily be demolished with a few inquisitive reporters asking some relevant questions; they don’t need to be experts. There are enough around, but they don’t have access to the MSM.

    Better late than never:

    The £200bn economic bombshell lurking in the Labour Party’s manifesto
    Ed Miliband’s commitment to set a legal target for decarbonising the UK power sector by 2030 is likely to cost upwards of £200bn, according to analysis conducted by the Telegraph

    “Ed Miliband’s commitment to eliminate the vast majority of carbon from the UK power sector by 2030 could cost Britain more than £200bn, according to analysis conducted by The Telegraph.”

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/11582173/The-200bn-economic-bombshell-lurking-in-the-Labour-Partys-manifesto.html

    The agenda (21) to which Ed Miliband has commitment was set by a bureaucrat at a higher pay grade than the Prime Minister. Christopher Booker has been digging up this for many a year!

    Here is a good site for those new to the subject:
    http://www.green-agenda.com/index.html

  36. I have an idea for a story. It’s called Ring. It’s about a journalist who graduated from the H.L. Mencken school of journalism. He was kidnapped and brainwashed, forced to fight and kill in a war, against his own will. After he was freed from his brainwashing, he worked to track down the man who caused the war. But he didn’t kill the man in revenge. Ring was a journalist. The pen was mightier than the sword. He tracked down the man who was responsible, then he interviewed him. After that, he left with his buddies intending to publish an article exposing the truth for all to see.

  37. I mean, I thought it would be really great to have a character who graduated from a school of journalism. Most books are about weapons and bombs, stupid violence. My writing is poor, my personal character is poor, I wish I had been better educated, just like Ring. My character Ring was successful thanks to his education. Tony Blair always said education, education, education.

  38. Here’s another book idea: A retired policeman called Mr P walks the earth looking for an old friend. He finds her but what he never expected was the smile on her face and the starry glint in her beautiful eyes.

  39. Last book idea (for now, before I fall off my bicycle dressed as the emperor without any clothes):

    A young lady whose husband has recently died lives in a small residential area, the locals look to her as a leader. She guides her followers to live their lives according to the Tao te Ching. People come from all around the world to be taught by her, because they were attracted by her close relative’s famous surname. She guides both locals and outsiders to follow the same philosophy as her. She’s a teacher, basically. Like a Chinese version of Socrates or Plato, but more humble and simple.

    Best wishes to all the users of this website.

  40. Let’s cut to the chase: whatever government is cobbled together after May 7th will be deleterious to the this nation. We have to make the first move towards changing the political landscape. Vote UKIP. Even if it means the egregious spawn of a Marxist traitor gets temporary incumbency of No. 10. (wherein he will be further exposed as the poseur he is). Thereafter there will be a shake-up of free market politics, as the EU starts to crumble under its own excesses and the geopolitical temperature rises (unlike to climatic temperature). If Farage plays his cards right and forms an alliance with the Tory right wing, change can and must take place. Every patriot of England should vote for UKIP, even though the party is not fully formed and has some baggage that needs to be discarded. VOTE UKIP – regardless! My last word on the General Election.

  41. Frank P

    “VOTE UKIP – regardless! My last word on the General Election”.

    We already have.

  42. dg May 5th, 2015 – 14:30

    A suggestion, stop posting here, this will give you more time to write your book!

  43. I was perusing the books in a charity shop today and saw an educational revision book, published by the BBC:
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/

    Even the state propaganda only suggests we pay our licence to watch TV, and the money ends up at the BBC – but surely it should used to provide TV programs. Why, oh why, is our public TV organisation doing this?

    I know why, so it more of: why are we letting it happen? TV is a powerful enough medium to control, without influencing the educational sector!

  47. The Delinpole’s piee is worth posting here in full – but the above link is still worth a visit for the some of the comments:

    “Yesterday I gave you my thoughts on the Conservatives. Today it’s UKIP’s turn.

    The reasons for not wanting to vote UKIP seem to me fairly obvious. Either you’re a stupid lefty or you’re in a Tory/Labour marginal and you only want the phrase “new Prime Minister Ed Miliband” to exist in your nightmares.

    But the reasons for voting UKIP, in most cases, seem to me to be stronger.

    1. Louise Mensch. I once Tweeted “There is no more loathsome Tory than the kind which sees UKIP as a bigger problem than Labour, the Greens, the SNP and the Lib Dems.” It was her I meant.

    2. Nigel Farage. The very worst of all possible outcomes of this election is if Farage doesn’t win South Thanet. He has fought in the teeth of the most scabrous and unjustified Establishment hate campaign I think I’ve ever witnessed and thoroughly deserves to be in Westminster so that he can hold that Establishment to account.

    3. The Manifesto. Never mind the debate over Libertarian UKIP versus Red UKIP. The manifesto’s pretty sound. (Independently costed too). You look at their policies and you think: “God, wouldn’t it just be amazing if a party like this ever got into power.” Well stop fantasising and put your money where your mouth is. Obviously you won’t get a UKIP majority this time (though to read by the rabid tone of some of the comments below my piece yesterday, some of you are sufficiently delusional to imagine otherwise) but “from tiny acorns…. etc”. In any case, see 4.

    4. For UKIP this election isn’t necessarily about winning, but gaining sufficient share of the vote – second places are very important – to qualify for the enhanced funding which will put them in good stead to fight 2020 really hard.

    5. If you don’t vote UKIP, you’re David Cameron’s bitch. No really, you are – and this goes way back, possibly even to before the last general election when Cameron and his advisers made a cynical calculation: it doesn’t matter if we drift left because our heartland has nowhere else to go, so as well as natural Tories we can hoover up the squishy centrists, disaffected Blairites, etc. Yeah, that worked, Dave. That’s why you won such a stonking majority you didn’t have to go into Coalition with your ideological polar opposites. No, wait…

    6. Not just for disaffected Tories, yadda yadda. I put that one in because I know some of you get affronted by the idea that UKIP are the true heirs to Thatcher and you’d never consider yourself natural Conservatives and the reason that you were attracted to UKIP is that they’re completely different and resemble nothing that has ever existed in the entire history of politics. To which I say: “Yeah. Wotevs.” Now off you go and unseat whichever northern Labour candidate in your constituency deserves unseating.”

  48. The TV has got dead boring all of a sudden, innit.
    Could do with more snooker, football, or golf…

  50. Frank P 18.24

    An excellent summary. Vote UKIP.
    Doubters, don’t be deceived by Cameron’s fluttering blandishments, he’s lied too many times before.

  51. Frank P
    May 5th, 2015 – 18:24

    I did Frank – all the way from Down Under.

    Now we can only hope (PfM might pray) that it’s not too late and the UK can be pulled back from the brink and saved.

  54. Frank P, May 5th, 2015 – 18:24

    True, but things will have to get a LOT worse before unthinking tribal voters will vote for a game changer. Until then the grand children’s future will continue to be re mortgaged and the slide will continue.

  55. Noa, May 6th, 2015 – 00:33,

    I was slumming it down your way last week. 😉 🙂

    My daughter drew my attention to the election leaflet of the local UKIP candidate. Undoubtedly a fine and a refreshingly youthful fellow, but the photo was a little unnerving. The fringe and pudding basin haircut and disturbing grin gave the impression of a funeral parlour attendant with a secret vice 😯

    I have no qualms about voting for my local UKIP bloke. 🙂

  56. On a different mission, I motored the length of David Cameron’s constituency on Monday. I noted that only two farmers/landowners had put up roadside banners in his support. Apathy or arrogance?

    As I whispered through the beautiful Cotswold scenery in the comfort and luxury afforded by my ageing German gas-guzzler, I was also struck by the total absence of wind farms – despite the areas eminent suitability – funny, that.

  59. In line with certain politicians I have decided I don’t want austerity, so I have decided I want a new Range Rover (and not the cheapest one) and my wife has decided she wants a newly converted barn with stables and a lot of land.
    We deserve it.

  63. EC

    Which one? The Preston candidate is James Barker, however your description fits Simon Noble who is fighting Blackpool and Cleveleys. Both are excellent candidates and I would, in they were in my constituency vote for them without hesitation. My own UKIP candidate is the fiesty, attractive Kate Walsh, who already has my affections as well as my vote.

  64. Noa – 19:37

    Preston? Far too risky! 😉

    Lancaster. Perhaps a tad unfair but I was only making a humorous observation on the unfortunate choice of photo for the UKIP flyer, not making a comment on the candidate’s undoubted merits and suitability as a prospective MP.

    I’m voting for my local UKIP bloke, regardless. There’s no secret in that as my voter id will be entered on the numbered stub of the numbered ballot paper issued to me.

    It’s going to be a long night tomorrow.

  65. Despite what is written on Google, why are voting booths in the UK without curtains?

  66. Economics Compacted
    John Kenneth Fredbraith Speaks
    February 7, 2015
    This column contains everything there is to know about economics. Hereafter it will be possible to shut down university deprtments and stop talking about Keynes and the Asutrian School, to the great relief of mankind. In gratitude you can send me your childrens’college funds.

    In 1850 people all lived on farms and grew food, which they ate. Eating was really important to them. They liked eating. There was in 1850 tremendous demand for refrigerators and cars, but people didn’t know they wanted these things because they hadn’t been invented. Anyway, they didn’t have any money to buy them with.

    Yet the demand was there, crouched to spring. Much demand for almost everything, but little supply.

    Then farming automated and people all went to cities to work in factories to make refrigerators and cars, which had been invented. These weren’t as important as food, but they were pretty important. People had a little money now, and bought them. You don’t need advertising to sell what people actually want.

    There was lots of demand and getting to be pretty good supply.

    Soon the factories were spitting out more than anyone could use of everything that anyone could reasonably want. A family needs only so many refrigerators. Here we encounter the first crucial problem of the modern economy: too much supply and not enough demand.

    Yet the factories had to make stuff so people would have jobs, and the people had to buy the stuff so they could keep having factories. Economics is thus the study of the squirrel wheel.

    To keep people working and buying, the economy began making things that nobody really needed or would think to want, such as nail salons, electronic gadgets, and designer jeans. To get people to buy these things, the supply of demand had to increase. Advertising came about to manufacture demand for things that, without advertising, no one would buy. Consequently society now depends for existence on pop-ups, singing commercials at twenty minutes to the hour on television, billboards, and Google ads. Advertising thus became more important to the economy than anything it advertised.

    Labor

    Labor followed a similar pattern. When factories came, they needed lots of people to make the refrigerators and cars. Most work involved digging holes or lifting heavy objects, so the workers didn’t have to be smart or know much.

    Automation

    Then came the rolling disaster that economists don’t seem to have anticipated: automation. As factories produced the increasingly trivial goods that supported the economy, they needed fewer and fewer workers to make the trivial goods. This raised two questions: Who was going to buy the $450 running shoes that nobody needed except that advertising told them they did, and how were the workers who didn’t have work making them any longer going to get money to buy them? Or to eat?

    It became obvious, except to economists, that automation could do just about everything people were paid to do. Just now, someone has invented a burger-maker machine that will presumably replace hundreds of thousands of burger-flippers who aren’t needed anywhere else. Self-driving vehicles approach practicality, and will first replace long-haul truckers and then cabbies and delivery truck drivers. Much worse is in the offing. Here is the second crucial problem of modern economics: Where to put unnecessry people?

    The Theory of Increasing Uselessness

    A search continues, long quietly underway but now intensified, for ways to keep off the work force people for whom there is no work, or no real work. These are not necessarily lazy, shiftless, or parasitic. They just don’t have anything to do.

    Child-labor laws and requirements that people finish high school helped diminish the labor force. Then society told the young that they all needed to go to college, when most of them didn’t, and since the universities served chiefly as holding pens, the quality of education dropped. Universities did however employ professors and administrators. Here was another example of selling at high price something that no one really needed, namely the appearance of education.

    Swollen bureaucracies popped up to provide the appearance of work while the purported workers did little that would not better have been left undone. Military enterprise soaked up more people doing nothing that should be done. Exotic fighter planes that would never do anything to justify their existence but bomb remote goat-herds absorbed thousands of engineers and hundreds of billions of dollars. The engineers could as well have been paid for digging holes and filling them in, but this was judged unduly candid.

    Finally even these measures ceased to be enough. College graduates began living with their parents and lining up for jobs a Starbucks because there was no need for them anywhere else. Resort was had to outright charity. Thus food stamps, Section Eight housing, free lunches at school, AFDC, and all the other disbursements of free money. Those receiving the free money no longer had any incentive to work even if the opportunity offered. In the cities generation after generation now lived on charity, largely illiterate and in what is never called custodial care. They are simply unnecessary. There is nothing for them to do. So they don’t do anything.

    Poverty

    In America this is usually a state of mind rather than an economic condition. The allegedly poor have all their time free, a luxury not available to the indentured drones who pay for this leisure. The poor have enough to eat—gobbling Cheetos instead of real food is their choice—and they have access to libraries and parks and museums. Graduate students at the same economic level used to live a life of books, music, illicit substances, and good conversation. The recipients of charity are not economically poor, but mentally empty.

    Cognitive Stratification

    Meanwhile an elaborate and highly effective system developed for sucking the very bright young from every cranny in the country and sending them to the remaining good universities: SATs, GREs, National Merit, ACT, and suchlike. Here the top two percent in intelligence partied, married, and made babies, not always in that order, and went into brain-intensive trades like Silicon Valley, i-banking, and medicine. As the middle class sank into the lower-middle, the brain babies increasingly formed a thin layer of dominant if not always morally impressive intellects at the top of society.

    Increasingly aware of each other thanks to list-serves and web sites for the very smart, they foregathered internationally with their own kind, eschewing contact with the surrounding sea of slugs. (I will bet you are not reading this on a site where the comments are misspelled.) They prospered. Nobody else did. The battle lines were being drawn. Which brings us to:

    The Minimum Wage

    Conservatives harbor the curious notion that people will work if they don’t have to. This is because to them work, real actual work, is an abstraction with which they have no familiarity. Real work is usually unpleasant or boring. But to economic theorists, work means being a cardiac surgeon, talking head, columnist, or CEO. Thus they say that if we eliminate the minimum wage, black youth (these are always given as examples) will rush to labor for a dollar an hour, learn the trade, rise, and become CEOs. Horatio Alger and all that.

    This implies two things: First, that anyone in his right mind would spend eight hours a day flipping burgers for a pittance when he could live on charity in leisure at the same standard, and second, that any employer in his right mind would want to hire semi-literates with bad work habits when, given our current endemic unemployment, he has a choice of much more educated and dependable workers.

    In short, if the minimum wage were abolished, the bottom rungs of society would remain unemployed because their labor isn’t worth enough for them to live on, or worth anything at all. The bottom rungs creep upward. When almost everybody is unemployed, we will have to institute communism manque: “To each according to his needs and, from each, nothing much. I will then write The Theory of the Leisure Classes: A Study in Urban Chaos.”

    There you have it, all of economics in a small package. Buy survival gear.

  67. “Whichever way you vote, Britain will go to the dogs without God’s help.”

     http://alexanderboot.com/content/tomorrow-i%E2%80%99ll-commit-suicide

  70. Despite what is written on Google, why are voting booths in the UK without curtains?
    Can nobody tell me?

  71. anne wotana kaye – 14:15

    Why worry, it’s not a secret ballot anyway, hasn’t been for decades.

    Your electoral roll voter id is entered on the numbered stub of the numbered ballot paper that is issued to you.

    A simple 1960’s IT task to connect your name and address to the machine readable ballot paper.

    ALSO, “they” ask for your NI number these days if you register or change your details online.

    cue Sir Richard Mottram.

  72. EC (13:10)

    Good piece. Wonder whatever happened to the “bonfire of the quangos”. The heap seems to have now reached mountainous proportions.
    Hev yew got a loight bor?”

  73. It’s a fair bet that the ballot papers of candidates that “the powers that be” do not approve of (eg. BNP, EDL, Legalise Cannabis etc) have been pulled from local government storage by the plod, and cross matched with the electoral register to compile a database of “persons of interest”. Hopefully George Galloway’s “Respect” voters will have been similarly scrutinised.

    Not a conspiracy theory, BTW, I always work on the maxim that if something can be done, it will have been done – especially when it is so simple.

  75. btw EC, no mention of Christopher Bland in Foreman’s little rant. The brains behind the PFI and other merry wheezes, another kingpin in the quangocracy. And, of course, no mention of the words ‘Long March’. Even in his apparent apostasy, Jonathan doesn’t want to let all the cats out of the Gramscian bag. After all, we don’t yet know how much further this election will extend and speed up the LM. I guess he needs to keep some options open.

  76. EC
    May 7th, 2015 – 15:48
    Thanks. Confirmed what I suspected.

  77. Voted this morning, and, as I expect did most Wallsters, put my cross against the UKIP candidate. On my travels around the borough I bumped into various friends, all who had been on the same errand as I. All said they had voted UKIP, and not all those admitting to having done the dirty deed would I have suspected of voting the same way as I. There is something afoot across the land, and that an earthquake is on it’s way, as the bitten bite back after many years of contemptuous treatment by the political nomenklatura.

  78. I was recently speaking to a shop assistant in the Welsh Labour Heartlands and she confided that her news gathering involved going on-line and not watching TV as you cannot trust the BBC.

    The penny is dropping everywhere.

  83. The smell of sour grapes emanating from BBC agitprop is palpable. They are venting their spleen on the limpdumbs.

    Heh, heh, heh ….

  84. Vince Cable and Simon Hughes both gone. Hurray! What a dreadful night for the Libs. And Red Ed must be crying his eyes out.

  85. 4:42 am down under and it’s a pleasure to watch the BBC Election night program. How the commentary they have to deliver must be sticking in their craws!

    The Scots have voted and made a clear decision. They don’t want Westminster, they don’t want the UK. They want to spend as much as possible on free Irn Bru and deep-fried Mars bars so Cameron’s first task must be to cut them free. Build a wall, mine the seas and give Scots in England a simple choice to stay in their adopted home and stop whining or sod off back over the border. Let the Scots try to raise their own revenues, let the UK cancel the Barnett formula. If they starve, let them.

    The voting system now must change. UKIP votes have not been reflected in seats and that is immoral. It makes the winning party illegitimate. Clearly, the majority want the current economic measures to continue but want a referendum as soon as possible and a closing of the English and Welsh borders. Let the Scots have the approaching horde and fund them out of their revenues.

    Still many seats to be called, but it’s obvious the Tories will be able to carry on and govern without the Liberals. It has been a delight to watch the millstones like Cable and Hughes lose their seats. No longer will they be able to hold England back. I bet they’re now regretting their failure to properly support AV and their back-stabbing on boundary changes. Sadly, Clegg has just ‘won’ his seat, so no doubt he’ll haunt parliament for a while until he finds a safe sinecure in Brussels.

    I was beginning to think I might have to bring food parcels for the family (if the foul class-warrior and his resentful hordes had triumphed) when I visit in June but that threat seems to be fading. However, I shall resent all the hidden taxes I’ll have to pay during my visit (outrageous fuel duty, airport taxes and a criminal level of VAT) and, as I’ve explained to relatives, this is our last visit, we’re only coming again to bury people. I shall on this occasion, celebrate the burial of the Liberals who have blighted UK politics for generations.

  86. A recount in Ed Balls seat. Perhaps the blinking bastard is about to get his come-uppance? Maybe the scumbag is about to be thrown out on his ear.

    Oh joy and bliss.

    Now make my day and let’s see Millipede slink off into political oblivion with his nasty little socialist tail dragging behind him.

    All that could make this day better would be an announcement that the war-criminal Blair is finally brought to book.

  87. Morning telemachus, how’s your hubris?

    A New Dawn eh? Your boasting, premature triumphalism and gloating have served you badly. Pride goes before a fall and, boy, have Labour fallen.

    I’m currently keeping my fingers crossed that your genius Balls will be gone.

    “And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
    Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
    O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

  88. Snp 5.1% popular vote. 56 seats
    Limp dumps 8 from 7.8%
    Ukip 1 from 12.4%

    How shite?

  89. Colonel Mustard
    May 8th, 2015 – 07:27

    With permission Peter now that the General Election is over
    telemachus, like the Charismatic One just rejected will bounce back

  90. Blinkie Balls is gone. Oh happy day!! His lying and sliming was, in the end, to no avail – the voters saw through his incompetence where economics are concerned.

    Tough luck, Telemucus, the lies are coming back to haunt you and all the other socialist class-warriors.

  91. Ed bollocks gone
    Nick robinson saying ukip did it for him.
    There is a god!

  92. In my current constituency – with the LAB – CON “understanding” …
    (i.e. that CONs NEVER try too hard to win it)
    then the result was a foregone conclusion – BUT LAB & CONs vote were both 4% down and UKIP got 20% of the vote. That’s a LOT of people who are fed up!

  93. My joy at Balls & Galloway et al being skewered is tempered by the realisation that the fat poisonous cnut that goes by the name of Alex Salmond is back leading the Scottish National Socialist Party in Westminster.

  94. Taxi for Mr Balls! The “Charismatic One” has left the building.

    Looks like Slimer is back posting his tripe. His new chum Malevolence, the “malicious little sh*t” (© Damaris Tighe) should be pleased. They can reminisce about Grosvenor Square and Tariq Ali.

  95. Ironic that Galloway the Traitor has been replaced by a Moslem, who declared Galloway is a disgrace to democracy. Maybe, just maybe, things will get better.

  96. Ed Davey has gone, the LimpDems are broken, but will the Department of Energy & Climate Change continue?

    Although the Tories have supported the 2008 Climate Change Act, will they ‘find new Scientific evidence’ that allows them to repeal it?

    It’s one of the tests confronting Cameron.

  97. Maybe Labour can explain why they imported so many muslims without any forethought:

    Extremists order east London Muslims to boycott election vote in Tower Hamlets
    Radicals accused of intimidating Muslims with campaign that claims voting is un-Islamic
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11590565/Muslims-ordered-not-to-vote-to-by-extremists.html

    It is: SHIRK, THE GREATEST CRIME AGINST (sic) ALLAH

    I have known for decades that islamic countries and voting do not go together, and certainly not with democracy and civil order!

    Apart from having no respect for Britain or its people and memorised by votes and State authority, why?

  98. Well, the old adage proved right again – you can’t fart against thunder. Stand by for 2 years of EU being shipped into England and spewed from the TV screens.

    As for the ‘united kingdom’. DMAFF!!

    Nice to see Ed ‘Mussolini’ Balls hanging upside down on a West Yorkshire lamp-post, though.

    Good try UKIP, don’t despair.

  101. A suitable epitaph rED ?

    He proved that he was Cain, also proved he wasn’t Able(sic)

  103. There is a delicious irony in the fact that Labour let the devolution genie out of the bottle and have been so badly hurt by it.

    Hoisted on their own petard. Now let’s see if Labour and the SNP form that alliance that telemachus boasted so much about – in the twilight of opposition.

  104. EC 12:51 & 12:43

    🙂 🙂

    The epitaph could be inscribed on rear side of his ‘tombstone of intent’ which then be planted between those of Daddy and Karl Marx in Highgate cemetery.

  106. Frank P
    May 8th, 2015 – 11
    Hi Frank,
    Always thought the pop-eyed Balls more resembled Goering!

  108. Colonel Mustard May 8th, 2015 – 13:17

    “There is a delicious irony in the fact that Labour let the devolution genie out of the bottle and have been so badly hurt by it.”

    A classic case of unintended consequences, biting them in the arse.

  109. RobertC May 8th, 2015 – 10:45

    “It is: SHIRK, THE GREATEST CRIME AGINST (sic) ALLAH”

    “I have known for decades that islamic countries and voting do not go together, and certainly not with democracy and civil order!”

    Let us never forget that they are all a fifth column within our midst we will see a day of reckoning one of these days.

  110. AWK 8th – 15:18

    “Always thought the pop-eyed Balls more resembled Goering!”

    Ever since his stalinist appearance in one photo from 2010, I’ve always thought of him as KOMNCCAP Balls. 🙂

  111. Tchah! most of my hate figures have gone. Who will I have to learn to hate next? O-oh, the confusions of advancing age…..

  112. Ostrich (occasionally)
    May 8th, 2015 – 16:48
    That’s why I avoid looking in the mirror. 🙂

  113. Ostrich (occasionally) – 16.48

    How about David Cameron for keeping immigration at the politburo’s prescribed level of around 800,000 per year, for insulting millions of natural conservative voters, or what about Theresa May for her continuing protection of Islamic terrorists and her plans to make it a crime to make any criticism of them whilst at the same time publicly advising police officers and military personnel not to be seen in public wearing any item of uniform for fear of attracting unwanted spitting or beheading on the way to work, or what about Anna Soubry, another in the Conservative Party with no enemies to her Left, or there’s the BBC, or the 900 Quangos costing £170 billion a year, no cuts there, oh no, we must preserve the political class mustn’t we (can anyone name a quango the loss of which would cause their life to collapse?), or what about every institution in the country stuffed with Common Purpose apparatchiks immune from prosecution or opprobrium no matter how many die in repulsive circumstances in our envy of the world NHS, or how many children are gang-raped by the diverse hordes (I mention them now afore Theresa ratchets up the level of Governmental totalitarianism), or how many of our own people have to leave cities where their families have lived for generations but all the housing goes to those immigrants on the Emergency Lists and on and on.

    Maybe you’re just a nicer guy than me, or maybe a little tired from staying up all night, but I have no shortage of hate figures and I especially hate that it’s a crime for me to hate them, but not for them to hate and disparage me.

  114. David Ossitt – 16:41
    “Let us never forget that they are all a fifth column within our midst we will see a day of reckoning one of these days.|”

    That is true, even for those ‘fifth column’ who don’t know it yet! It is what their leaders will expect them to do.

  115. Don’t know which gave me most pleasure, the obliteration of Hughes, Cable, Balls, or the humiliation of Miliband. A good time was had by all in this household. Went to sleep (at 5.0 a.m) wearing a big grin. Oh the joy of knowing Miliband is now history. Bet his brother is quietly chortling as well.

  116. Can it now be hoped that the combined death grip strangleholds of Political Correctness, totalitarian parasitic government by Europe, non-stop immigration, and the ever growing presence of Islam may now be loosened?

    Fat chance.

    The only difference will be that the hemp ropes with which the Socialists and Liberals planned to hang us will be replaced by Old Etonian silk ones.

  118. Herbert Thornton
    May 8th, 2015 – 19:07
    Yes, unfortunately they are all the damn same.

  119. Just went to the BBC iPlayer to look at some of the earlier coverage, Part 5 it was, and in the opening summary Huw the Welsh Nonce managed to give the final outcome of every party except, yes you’re there before me, UKIP, nor did the letters UKIP appear on the screen at all. It’s time UKIP encouraged its supporters to stop paying the license fee.

    Notwithstanding gaining 13% and coming second in about 120 seats, I really do think that UKIP were scuppered by the scare of the tartan menace, but has anyone else felt a distinct difference between Nigel’s performances in the EU parliament and how he performs here at home? We saw no sign of the anger at the existential threat to our freedoms and our rights in our homeland (I never imagined I would ever have to refer to Britons in the same language as was used on bush tribes in Africa) that he displays with brilliant cogency at the EU. Maybe he judges that there is only so much truth that he can peddle at once and I respect his judgement, he’s the bravest politician in the country, but truth is our only weapon and it will need to be wielded with full force.

    For me the election feels as though the Establishment’s dinner party had been gate-crashed by some rough types, but Samantha got the nice lady who does the hoovering to vacuum up those crumbs they’d upset onto the carpet and actually, do you know, apart from a faint memory of a rather unpleasant odour, and having to smile at people you’d rather not (thank god they brought those few in on a hired bus, imagine darling if one actually had to walk the streets and face the unvetted mob), one would hardly know 30million people pretended to express a view.

  120. In the scale of things Farage would have been a far more valuable voice in the House of Commons than Caroline Lucas is going to be. There is no shortage of deranged lefty grievance monkeys and platitudinous wets in that place but a sad absence of the sort of plain, uncomfortable speaking that Farage excels at.

  121. Irishboy – 21:10 ‘only so much truth’

    Do you remember in the Leaders’ debate, when Farage mentioned how many AIDS patients come to Britain and, just by chance, find out their situation after arrival?

    All Hell was let loose and the SNP representative was shocked, yes, shocked, yet still didn’t offer to take some of the load off the back of London hospitals. 🙂 It’s easy spending other peoples money!

    I have just watched BBCQT discussing how many votes it has taken for each party to elect one of their own, with UKIP in the millions, and also how unfair it was, or not! They also discussed how fair it was for the Tories to be rewarded and the Lib Dems to be punished for the last Coalition Government.

    What I haven’t seen (maybe I missed it 🙂 ) is how unfair the 2008 Climate Change Act, subjecting everyone to green taxes, scaring children and de-industrialising Britain (only to enrich the rich) or any other of our well known issues.

    Looking through the UKIP manifesto, there isn’t much that most (British) sensible people would object to. It could be used to see how well the Tories are performing. It might be possible that, in the next election, which may not be long coming, that it would require few amendments.

    Remember, UKIP’s desire is for Britain to have the right policies, not happy, comfortable, politicians believing everything is fair, everything shared out according to Paddy Ashdown !

    I think the SNP + Labour threat did make the voters think, just not enough!

    Cameron needs step up to the plate, forget that he is the heir to Blair, and do what he might just be able to do, manage, with a little help from the 3,900,000 UKIP voters, and growing. He cannot hide behind the Lib Dems and he cannot kick any of this in the long grass as so many of the problems have been around for years, mostly since Blair!

    For example, he needs to repeal the Climate Change Act, and reduce the green subsidies as much as legally possible, even if it hits his father-in-law’s pocket and those politicians who have interesting, lucrative green interests!

    It will be interesting to see, if it happens, will it be done with a change of heart or piecemeal, in an attempt to avoid antagonising the Greenies?

  122. It would be interesting to know the effects in all constituencies of migrants and their children voting. I mean the effect on democracy and the extent to which it skews results away from national interests.

  123. Colonel Mustard – 22:03

    UKIP need to take stock. I can see that trying to lead an anti-EU party from Brussels is not the easiest of tasks. I still don’t know whether Farage is still leading the party in Brussels.

  124. Much predictable whining from the thespianic community about the election result. It prompted me to retrieve a rather fine piece by Kevin Myers from 2002.

    “With their chronic insecurity, their pathological need for fame, or their belief in its imminence, no group outside the confines of a mental hospital is more psychologically and emotionally unsuited to give advice to anyone else about anything than are actors.”

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3571842/This-cringe-making-appeal-from-Sinead.html

  126. Lefties really don’t have a clue, they just don’t get it.

    Their leader, a man who couldn’t even eat a bacon sandwich (we’ll skip the hypocrisy of a Jew eating pork to prove his working-class credentials) resigns – so they appoint as a temporary replacement a feminazi paedophile supporter as his stand-in.

    That’ll go down well in Rochdale, Rotherham, Oxford and anywhere jimmy Saville polluted!

  127. While we still think Britain would be better in every way if it left the Eu, with little risk as we are so badly treated and a net payer, but Cameron will not deliver a Brixit, Brussels says the opposite: we would be worse off, but Cameron is likely to deliver:
    Europe fears a Tory Britain is sleepwalking towards the exit
    “Brussels woke yesterday morning to the certainty of a Conservative government and the risk of Britain committing “hara-kiri” with a referendum taking the country out of the European Union.
    Like most of Britain, the world of Brussels officialdom and diplomacy had swallowed pollster predictions of a hung parliament, putting Labour and the Tories neck and neck.
    While EU officials and diplomats had been fearful of the consequences of protracted parliamentary deadlock, many had been grateful that the prospect of the referendum promised by David Cameron had receded.”
    (£) http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article4435343.ece

    Is “hara-kiri” of Greek origin?

  130. Millibrat at the Cenotaph today; looking as though someone had shit in his pocket and he’d only just found it. I suppose one could be generous and interpret that as profound contemplation on the 70th anniversary of VE Day, or on the other hand …

  131. I was hoping that Nigel Farage would call for a leadership election as he resigned and then subsequently announce that he would stand.

    His resignation seems to have been a case of “Tir’d with all these, from these would I be gone”. He has my sympathy. He needs a sabbatical whichwould provide the opportunity for him to refresh his fortitude before re-entering the Augean stable of English politics.

    Nonetheless, if Robert’s Rules of Order apply, UKIP has yet to resolve formally to accept his resignation. With the election out of the way, the efforts of the New World Order will intensify. The government here will continue implementation of its policies to cut up the United Kingdom into dependent regions of the European Union, and to divide, destabilize and weaken the country’s military. The Financial Times, a house organ of the Bilderbergers who sponsored Ed Balls in Copenhagen last year, published an article yesterday which began as follows:

    “Some top US former military leaders have called for Congress to give President Barack Obama the fast-track authority he needs to complete ambitious trade deals in both the Pacific and Atlantic, warning of “harmful strategic consequences” if they are not successful.

    The intervention from 17 former secretaries of defence and retired military leaders including Colin Powell, Leon Panetta, Donald Rumsfeld and David Petraeus in a letter sent on Thursday to congressional leaders from both parties comes amid a volatile debate over trade in Washington.”

    http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cf8737a0-f478-11e4-9a58-00144feab7de.html#axzz3ZahtV6Xg

    The reference to the efforts of US politicos of dubious allegiance working with to “fast track” unconstitutional initiatives to cement supranational structures for political, military, economic and ecclesiastical control include the notorious Trans Pacific Partnership. “Fast track” indicates that the enemy within is in a hurry – lest timely counter measures be devised. The TPP is being negotiated behind the backs of the people it will affect. The US Congress is not permitted to see a draft of the “legislation” and will be required to approve it without knowing its content.

    The European Union will also “fast track” completion of its plans for sovereignty over the former sovereign nation states of which it is comprised. Crocodile tears will continue to be shed with increasing profusion over the weakening and ultimate dismantling of the British military. Creation of an unaccountable European force and and , perhaps, the transfer of command of NATO to the United Nations are all part of the scenery of this nightmare.

    In this context, on the horizon we see the European Union, the North American Union, and the Trans-Pacific region born in darkness and growing into the three-headed extra-parliamentary executive of the kind which Nigel Farage identified so devastatingly in his speeches in Brussels.

    These dangers are by no means unreal. The country needs UKIP and UKIP needs Mr. Farage. There should therefore I hope be a motion, unanimously passed by UKIP, not to accept his resignation as leader of the party. Then he should be given a few months sabbatical while a leader pro tem runs the shop. The performance of his responsibilities as an MEP will give him a vantage from which to observe and study the net of “trade agreements” being thrown over the weakened gladiators and an opportunity to plan a strategy for the run-up to 2020.

  132. Irishboy (18:16 & 21:10)

    Thanks for reminding us that although we are allowed a day or two to enjoy the humiliation of the front line contingent of the Long March, there is still much to do, because the moles are still there, burrowing away. And some of them are dressed in blue … and tartan … and green …

    And what a shame that Verity is no longer available to point out that he may have retained the key to No.10 but he’s still got a mouth like a hen’s arse – and that SamCam’s wardrobe is apparently the third rack of the local Sue Rider charity shop. 🙂

  133. RobertC

    Many thanks for the link to the ‘Pointman’ piece. Excellent analysis. I shall copy it to my American buddies who are asking “WTF??”

    You obviated a daunting task for me on a day of the Black Dog, despite the comparatively good news.

  135. The most telling two results, I thought, were Clacton and Rochester & Strood, which both had UKIP MPs.

    The voters there knew that they could vote UKIP and get UKIP.

    But the Sun, Daily Mail, Telegraph front pages – day after day, drip, drip, dripfeed worked. And they all sang one song: Ed and Nichola are coming. And the same old Chicken Licken sky will fall on your head schtick worked. It frightened Carswell’s majority shrinking to 3,500 and Reckless to lose his seat altogether.

    Those UKIP voters must have gone to the Tories.

    But, in fact, the Labour Party is dead. It was the ex-Labour voters in the North who were braver than those in the South. Labour’s Northern: ‘my grandfather voted Labour, my father voted Labour’ pattern has been broken. UKIP came from nowhere to form a strong second in many Northern seats they have never had a presence in before (unlike Clacton and Rochester where UKIP was established).

    As to ‘be afraid of Nichola Sturgeon’ – what for? She only wants one thing: independence. She would have demanded a referendum as a price for any coalition to prop up Dead Ed, but – as Peter Hitchens points out today (he’s no longer censored by his employer now the Rothermeres have the result they wanted) – Cameron’s victory will enrage the SNP voters even futher, the SNP will win a majority in next year’s Scottish elections and use the mandate to, er, demand a referendum.

    They will simply use the loathing of the Tories in Scotland as a ramp to get what they want.

    So what’s to fear from her? Whoever was in Downing Street, she was going to get her referendum.

    As to what’s to fear from Cameron, I’ll tell you. There will be a referedum on the EU in 2017 and the country will be faced with Sun, Mail and Telegraph Chicken Licken the sky will fall on your heads and you’ll lose your jobs if you don’t vote to stay in the EU – and Britain will vote to stay in, with its Hen’s Arse prime minister laughing at how gullible people are at the power of the Press.

    As Mr Hitchens puts it – now that he’s no longer censored – it’s Groundhog Day. It’s 1992 mixed in with 1997 with the Heir to Blair, a sort of retro megamix of crummy old politics.

    How I long to see the end of LibLabCon.

  137. I have to say, if all I get to see out of the next five years is the Scots voting for independence and the Brits being tricked into voting to stay in the EU, I’d take that.

    I’d like the Scots to go independent while the Tories are in power and I’d like Cameron to take the blame for the sheep not getting out of Europe. If they want to behave like sheep and vote LibLabCon, let them be treated like sheep.

    When they don’t vote LibLabCon, then they’ll be grown up enough to leave Europe. They’ve got to learn to stop sucking Cameron’s Eton tit first.

  139. Amidst all the hubris you may have missed the placard on College Green

    “CHRIST WILL COME AND SWEEP ALL POLITICIANS FROM POWER, SAYS THE BIBLE”

  140. Irishboy 21.10 Only so much truth.
    I agree with you there is a difference in how and what Farage speaks about here in the UK and in the EU forum. However, during this election I felt he was not himself, in fact probably unwell. In my lifetime I have never seen any public figure so abused, smeared and insulted as he is. I think this has worn him down and to some extent that is why ‘at home’ he minds his words. In his resignation letter he mentions how relentless it has been over so many years. But let’s hope he does come back.

  141. RobertC, May 9th, 2015 – 00:13

    Great article.

    “UKIP took 16% of the vote but only one seat out of 650. I rather suspect that demographic is not going to go away, not least because anyone who voted for it had to suffer a barrage of frankly shameful propaganda, not only from both sides of the political divide but pretty much every organ of the mainstream media.”

    Good point!

  142. So Cameron may do what he did with the AV vote (also the victim of a Daily Mail, Sun, Telegraph battering) – and do it now while he has this image of the swashbuckiling saviour of the UK!

    Pass the sickbag, Alice.

  143. Like many others, I hope UKIP keeps going and look to the fertile ground (and it was a shame that UKIP didn’t have the money to do this in the election) – look North.

    Honestly, Labour is dead oop North. Labour’s reputation as am immigrant loving, everyone else is second class to Muslims party is what the young people think of it. THe Labour tribalism has gone.

    That is why UKIP came second in so many seats up North. The voters’ attitude was We have nothing to lose.

    Down south there was far too much Chicken Licken panic with people believing Paul Dacre at the last moment and for some reason voting Tory.

    It’s the rise of characters like Sir Iqbal Sacrabie that means Labour will not resurrect itself ever in the old working class heartlands. Ironically, it was these ex-Labour voting types who really got the message and vote for UKIP.

  144. RobertC, May 9th, 2015 – 00:13

    Here’s another interesting perspective from Brendan O’ Neil at Spiked:

    Labour has transformed from a party of the trade unions into a party of the metropolitan, largely London-based opinion-shaping set and new clerisy. A party that was born to represent working people’s interests is now little more than a kind of political safe haven for a new elite that feels cut off both from traditional politics and the masses. This is the real story of the 2015 General Election: the reduction of Labour to a middle-class machine, which speaks to a bigger and profound hollowing out, even death, of social democracy as we knew it.

    The most revealing moments on TV and Twitter last night, as the exit-poll results were unveiled and the first results came in, involved the utter incomprehension of liberal observers and Labourites. They couldn’t believe what they were seeing. ‘But the opinion polls said we would do well’, they all said, confirming that these politicos and observers no longer rub shoulders, or anything else, with the masses and have thus become completely reliant on opinion pollsters as a kind of conduit to the little people: modern-day tea-leaf-readers who might reveal what They are thinking. The Twitterati — the time-rich, mostly left-leaning set, consisting of cultural entrepreneurs, commentators and other people who don’t work with their hands and can therefore tweet all day — were especially dumbfounded by the results. Boiled down, their pained cry was: ‘But everyone I know voted Labour.’ They know nothing of the world beyond Twitter, the world outside the Guardianista colonies of London, out where people work rather than tweet.

    These politicos’ incomprehension summed up why Labour did so badly: because it is now hugely, irreparably disconnected from both the public in general and from its traditional grassroots supporters.

    http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/election-2015-social-democracy-is-dead.-dont-mourn/#.VU3HxNNViko

  145. Written before the election, and rather sums it up:

    A Few Notes on the Election, seen from an English Town

    We recoil from the responsibility of deciding the future of the country. We pretend to be interested, but we run from any real decisions. Perhaps twelve times in a lifetime, some of us in marginal seats can alter the destiny of the nation with a pencilled cross. But will we?

    No. We will pretend to choose, but actually shrink back into our tribal shells, like so many million frightened tortoises. This is why, at general elections, independents and small parties do so much worse than they do in by-elections and Euro polls. Rather than think, we will rally to whatever flag we think is ours.

    In the hope of a bit of eccentricity, I approached a rather wild-looking man with a long silver ponytail, only to be met with the answer (delivered in portentous tones and with lowered eyebrows, as if it were hugely profound) ‘Better the Devil You Know’. Then he strode away. [I think we can take it he’s Tory not UKIP – better the devil you know – God give me strength!]

    One man said, without any sense of embarrassment, that he had always voted Tory, and always would, just as he had always shopped at Tesco, and always would. He wasn’t going to be influenced out of either by better quality, lower prices or more attractive policies elsewhere. Tory was what he was, and Tesco’s too. From what he told me of his life, he didn’t seem to me to have any reason to be contented with either of them.

    [Quite. So those were the tortoises who won it for Dave, and Lynton Crosby, you’re hired for the stay in EU campaign – and those same tortoies will vote to keep the UK in]

    http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2015/04/a-few-notes-on-the-election-seen-from-an-english-town.html

  146. RobertC, May 9th, 2015 – 00:03

    “Everyone, start knitting:”

    http://snag.gy/uH4Cn.jpg

    I’ve been trying to tell people about this for at the the last 10 years! The closure program of ageing nuclear reactors, failure to build any more, and reliance of the eco-loons on wind turbines make power cuts from 2018 onwards and inevitability.

    We can all take great comfort, if not warmth, in the knowledge that Westminster and London will be protected!

  147. EC – every word is true.

    But the public heard the Chicken Licken stories of Lynton, the Mail, Telegraph and Sun and when they had the chance to vote for real change – the Chicken Lickens all ran into Dave the Fox’s chicken coop, where he will eat them all alive.

    And there’s no hope of an early exit from Dave. He’s got five years to let rip his Bullingdon Club burps and he chews through the bones of people frightened enough to vote for him. Doh!

  148. Paul Dacre crows to theose who would dare to challenge the status quo:

    Mail is the UK’s most influential newspaper: Among those affected by coverage, majority said this paper had greatest impact

    Mail had greater influence than Guardian or The Times, poll shows
    Highlighted how the SNP would hold a Labour minority to ransom

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3074269/Mail-UK-s-influential-newspaper-affected-coverage-30-cent-said-paper-greatest-impact.html

    And he is right.

    I am so sorry so many people lost their nerve but, please remember this. It was done in Clacton (twice), it was done in Rochester and it was done in the European elections UKIP won.

    For those of us who will never vote LibLabCon (we number almost 4 million, because there were plenty of people who said they’d never vote for Dave again and were telling the truth) – we need something.

    And if UKIP goes? I’d rather vote Monster Raving Looney than LibLabCon.

    And as Dacre crows in his John Major-like victory, remember how that ended up. John Major! He shafted the country and shafted Edwina. Dave is doing the same only with better looking lackeys when he’s not shafting the country. What a stink!

  149. Sheila T

    Farage has indeed been subjected to intolerable abuse and that he kept his dignified composure shows what a remarkable man he is, and although the MSM tried their damnedest to taint UKIP as BNP-lite, the fact that the mud didn’t stick is a great achievement. Suzanne Evans also deserves admiration for her excellent performances on TV and bringing the same air of dignity and the using actual facts to make her argument.
    And yet my criticism which goes back to before the election campaign is that they do bend to the Leftist mantras more than I think they should. Just two examples, the first being the expulsion of Godfrey Bloom over a remark that was regarded by all who were present as a joke which all laughed at. Now I can imagine that Nigel and Godfrey have a stormy relationship but he too is a brilliant sharp-edged thinker and speaker, check on You Tube for his extraordinary performances in the EU, and UKIP needs an attack dog and he would have been perfect. The second example is over immigration. UKIP continue to use the net figures and this is simply wrong and of course masks what anyone living in London can see with their own eyes. I still see people quoting a figure of 3.5 or 4 million immigrants since 1997, but every year of Cameron’s government saw 700,000 National Insurance numbers issued to foreigners every year, as has been the case for more thn 15 years, and how many of them bring family with them? The true figure must be nearer 12 or 15 million!!! The national census has been scrapped for a reason.
    And in answer to PfM’s query earlier, I heard that in 125 constituencies the size of the muslim vote was bigger than the incumbent MP’s majority, so yes, foreigners already have the power to swing elections. Perhaps as more people feel swamped and alienated, I left London when suddenly I was habitually the only white guy on the bus, it will be possible to attack the Left’s most pernicious weapon which is that if you are born in Britain or even have lived here only for 5 minutes, then you are British will full rights. The fact that in the main only the white working class has been cleansed from their traditional areas means that there isn’t yet political traction with this, but there only needs to be another race riot in Brixton or Lewisham or wherever and all those million pound houses start to devalue or become difficult to sell except to asians for a loss, and maybe even the Guardian readers who inhabit these areas will be have reality smacked in their as yet complacent smug holier than thou faces.

    But a brilliant week for UKIP and the flame of freedom remains sheltered and protected at least. Oh, and I noticed that the word freedom wasn’t used once by anyone that I noticed in this campaign.

  150. From a personal point of view, I am gutted because the election seemed like win win situation: Dave or Ed would be PM, but with their wings clipped. Either would have been a lame duck and the minor parties would have continued to make ground.

    But a Tory outright win was not in my wildest nightmares.

    And look at how Dacre did it: all the blame and vitriol went on Russell Brand (who spent most of the time arguing not to vote), Nick Clegg (a useless man, but then he wasn’t the top dog at the table, was he?), Nicola Sturgeon (who only wants a referendum – a hop and a skip and two nations would be happy), and Ed Miliband (a powerless non-entity).

    And not one whit of blame on our Etonian chum. I guess there’s one good thing. Five years from now it won’t all be someone else’s fault.

    Mr Slippery might actually one day be held to account.

  151. A Fresh New England:

    A dynamic new Prime Minister dedicated to a referendum to make us free again.

    An elegant Imelda Marcos Aspirant Home Secretary.

    An ex Thatcher Lietenant Defence Secretary.

    A Foriegn Secretary well used to our traditions as the custodian of the legacy of the Stockton to Darlington railway.

    I am so glad we went thru all that crap worried by toadie Clegg and wonk Miliband.

    And to cap it all the dynamic new PM makes his first phone call to the Scottish Fish Wife promising his allegiance at her court.

    Should I emigrate?

  152. SheilaT – 09:13
    So true. Even his family were attacked in a pub!

    I think, for UKIP, this election was a Pyrrhic defeat: it looks like a defeat, but in fact it isn’t. Something that Farage could see even before the polls opened!

  153. Two Soups – 10:39
    “I guess there’s one good thing. Five years from now it won’t all be someone else’s fault.”

    And we will be able to monitor progress. 🙂

    If Nicola Sturgeon gets her referendum, then ‘complete independence’, what will she have achieved? With oil prices unlikely to rise for sometime, the country loosing its Barnet Formula perk, probably losing the British nuclear base (because of SNP policies), losing a lot of its finance industry to London, with much else following, with the Socialist grip tightening, its electricity supply enfeebled by too much wind and not enough coal, would it be a victory? Only for those at the top of the political tree.

    They haven’t yet sorted out what currency it would use, how all the national functions, like car licencing, would be untangled or whether Scottish people would be barred from sitting as MPs in the rest of the UK, and likewise for non-Scots sitting in Scotland, though who would want to endure that privilege?

    If she goes for partial independence, along with near enough identical solutions for E, W and NI, then it would be what Labour should have started, all those years ago!

  154. I cannot bear to read the newspaper websites. It’s like being a character in The Prisoner.

    Five more years of this? And this time there’s not even the fun of coalition with muppets like the Clegglet and Danny ‘Beaker’ Alexander to laugh at. Just Dave’s undiluted spite.

    A day in and I cannot, cannot bear it. Go away, Dave!

  155. Irish Boy, [also left London when I was the only white woman on the bus]. I agree with your post and how UKIP have held back on some very important facts that not only the public should hear, but want to hear because they experience the effects of the influx on a daily basis (better not think about it makes me mad). UKIP have also allowed itself to be drawn into what I think of as a continuation of Blairism in all its vile forms. Words do not any longer mean what they once did; not only that they are continually being refined and altered. Without so much as a whisper the agenda has been set by the left and everyone – even Farage seems to engage on their (not our) terms. When will this end! We really have to assert ourselves. Despite this Farage has more courage, honesty and dignity than the snakey shapeshifter in no.10 and all the scum media.

  156. Irishboy – 10:35

    For your first example, I would say it wasn’t what he said, it was what was going to be the next stumble? And would it detract attention from the next discussion so valiantly brought to the fore by ‘hard working party members’? He was wasting very limited resources, gleefully aiding the hostile media. He was a serial offender, and while sharp brains and maverickness are highly desired in a leading edge politician, it also needs the ability to understand that if a political party exhibits too many of those qualities, it is not taken seriously. Look at Boris: he is finding it difficult to return to the fold, and he has the establishment behind him, not against him. As was said at the time, when you have meagre resources, you don’t show your enemy any of your weaknesses, even if they are meant as a joke.

    As for the second was, what Farage said was unarguably true, and the net figure would have had to be defended, continually, and understatements are often more powerful than exact reporting.

    I agree with the rest of your post. So many of the well-off, educated, non-business aware have been able to pretend that they believe in Socialism. It fair, isn’t it? Throwing money at the masses might increase their purchasing power so they can by non-essentials (see earlier long post – all you need to know about economics) but it eats away at the very fabric of wealth, which they wouldn’t recognise if it hit them between the eyes, which it did, to some extent, this week! 🙂

  157. RobertC, agree this isn’t a defeat at all for UKIP, at least it has shown us how strong we are in the country – and but for first past the post we would have MPs in parliament today. Nigel thought that to lead a party a person should be an MP, but the Sturgeon woman isn’t so why should he need to be. I think the main difficulty for him, in continuing is the smears, lies and attacks on him, his wife and family. Some of it is overt and crude other times it is more subtle but just as wounding. Notice, during the campaign how the media juxtaposed pictures of Farage after his plane crash looking broken and bleeding none of it done in a sympathetic way- it is beyond cruel and heartless.

  158. On my Pyrrhic defeat idea, I think facts will ‘power assist’ UKIP policies.

    Remember, UKIP members priority is not political power for its own sake, it is to ensure their policies are carried out, and help can come from anywhere. Here are two related articles as examples:

    Australia PM adviser says climate change is ‘UN-led ruse to establish new world order’
    Tony Abbott’s business adviser says global warming a fallacy supported by United Nations to ‘create a new authoritarian world order under its control’
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/11591193/Australia-PM-advisor-says-climate-change-a-UN-led-ruse.html

    David Cameron must reform DECC to keep UK lights on
    A majority government is an oportunity to fix Britain’s broken energy department
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/11593344/David-Cameron-must-reform-DECC-to-keep-UK-lights-on.html

  159. Right, here is my take.
    Cameron has a majority of 12. He still has a rump of eurosceptic MP’s who could make trouble. Even defect to UKIP. He has to keep them happy.
    Over the parliament some of his MP’s will die or resign. The by-elections will be difficult in some places. For the kippers have not gone away.
    And the one to watch is suzanne evans. She was good on the telly the other night and I feel sure UKIP can now grow up and have a team of spokesmen. And 3.88 million votes mean they have to get their go on the telly.
    I fear Farage is not too good. He has suffered a car crash and testicular cancer and a plane crash, and the strain of the last few years. He needs a sabbatical. But him taking a back seat for a while will allow other to grow which is right and proper.

    and the momentum behind electoral reform is starting.
    https://www.change.org/p/david-cameron-reform-our-voting-system-to-make-it-fair-and-representative-makeseatsmatchvotes

  160. Irishboy – 10:35

    “The national census has been scrapped for a reason.”

    “I noticed that the word freedom wasn’t used once by anyone that I noticed in this campaign.”

    Both excellent, telling, and well made points.

  164. Rod Liddle has talked for years about the Labour Party dying and needing to reinvent itself. Dan Hodges and Charles Clarke and all the other arch Blairites are now going on about how Labour needs to change how it ‘communicates’ – he means spins.

    But the Labour Party cannot reinvent itself.

    The one thing it cannot compromise, that is at its rotten core, that it will never, ever shed is its desire for immigration and to wipe out the indigenes.

    Those Labour voters, whoever they were, were moneyed bien pensanters and immigrant blocs, with a lot of them being Muslim. And, of course, the postal vote fraud was still rife.

    So Labour can never rise from the ashes. It just means Muslim. It means non-white. Or white and rich enough to escape the cities.

    If the Labour Party were to do that, it might hold office. But it never, ever will.

    From here, it will probably put Chukka Ummuna up as leader and just chase the ethnic vote from hereon, which is its best hope. Up North, Labour has been rumbled – finally – by the white working classes. And from nowhere UKIP took many second places up North.

    Nippy Sweetie will get her referendum. If the Scots hated Westminster before, with Cameron ruling on his own, they will hate Westmisnter tenfold more, and she will secure that independence using that hatred of him and his party.

    I would suggest a referendum in the next life of the Scottish Parliament, when she will have a thumping majority to get it through, with full independence more or less straight away.

    For the disenfranchised of England and Wales, there is only UKIP.

  165. Ha! Paul Dacre and the Rothermeres are having a little joke on the front page of the Daily Mail today, with the headline: ‘This was YOUR victory!’

    The gormless readers think it means them. It is in fact a little pat on the back to Paul Dacre, the Rothermeres, Rupert Murdooch, the Barclay Twins, the Sun editor, the Telegraph editor and the shyest Tory of them all, Lynton Crosby.

    They took page one of the Joseph Goebbels playbook: tell a lie often enough that people will believe it (which is how UK elections are won) and put it on the front page of the Mail, Torygraph and Sun since Christmas: the Tartan terror. Ed and Nippy Sweetie are coming, don’t vote for anything other than Tory. And that crushed the UKIP vote.

    And morever, for the first time, they definitively tamed the internet. Posters were banned. Comments were closed. Comments were removed. Upvoting was restricted to people who were signed in. Paid-for trolls patrolled the chatboards.

    The internet, the thing that had challenged the MSM, was tamed. They have been apoplectic as the internet has drained the traditional Press of power.

    Well, this elction campaign was the re-assertion of mainstream Press power. And how.

    And like Lynton Crosby himself, no one in the Press talks about it. It was all done off the radar. People switched between stories about the Kardashians and Ed/Nippy Sweetie.

    It was YOUR victory, Mr Dacre. And don’t you know it.

    Lynton will be laughing himself to sleep for the next five years. He was hired because he killed off the Australian version of UKIP and off camera, out of sight, he used page one of e Spin Doctors’ Handbook – the ol’ Joe Goebbels trick, and did it again.

    And just with a few tweaks to that internet thing, the old Press got their power back.

  166. A post musing on the death of Labour:

    “As to the why of lost support, top of the list for me by a metroland kilometre is the espousal by Labour of minority causes, and an insidiously ideological rejection of anyone questioning them.”

    I would agree with that, but I would word it much more strongly. Labour will brook no critisim of immigration or of Muslims, or of ethnic minorities. And the reason for that is not because Labour is spinning. It actively wants to change the face of Britain: to wipe out its indigenes.

    That is why Labour is permanently unelectable. Labour will perform all sorts of tweaks over the next few years. All sorts of revamps and relaunches, but that immigration thing, it will never, ever give up on.

    Look at its supporters and how much they love to shriek ‘rayyyyycist’ – they love the feeling of power that gives them. What a quick way to close down the arguement and beat your opponent. They won’t give up that shorthand. No way.

    The fall-out from mass immigration is that Labour is dead. It can never be a party for the workers again.

    It is a party for immigrants, for fraudulent postal votes and so on. That’s its constituency. It took the Labour heartlands a long time to get it. But they have.

    https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2015/05/09/saturday-essay-it-isnt-that-difficult-to-see-why-labour-lost-the-election-but-it-is-for-the-left/

  168. I know a lot of people queried the polls and whether they were massaged to make people think, ‘I have some skin in the old two-party game’, and that Zero Hedge piece also posits:

    “I think it’s much more likely that they’ve all intentionally exaggerated Milibland’s poll numbers to make it look like there was an actual race going on.”

    That indeed is how these things work. British elections are always about enforced binary choice: ‘Labour or Tory – you can vote for whoever you like, but, really, folks, for it to count, it must be one of those two.’

    Bamboozled you again, didn’t we!

  169. Moscow seems to have put on a proper commemoration of VE Day. The large crowd of citizens each carrying a photograph of a relative killed or wounded in the war points up perhaps the contrast with the schematic, cramped exercise in London like some quickly thrown together Remembrance Day. Where were the British people in the ceremonies and where the specific memories of their dead and injured? Not politic perhaps , to get into that as our political class have been set the task of keeping us in this never-ending cycle of unnecessary wars.

    Alas, we no longer have the forces and hardware to put on much of a show even if our masters had the will and interest.

    ***

    Some very interesting posts on the Wall today by the way on the general election. Let’s not underestimate the role of Lynton Crosby though, an aspect dealt with by Kiran Stacey on page 7 of the first section of the Weekend FT.

  170. Two Soups @ 14:19

    Yes, I read that Zero Hedge piece. The election may have been a fraud in the context of the big picture; but the faces of Ed Milliband and Nick Clegg as they came forward to resign shows that it was all very real for them.

    With Ed Balls out, it will be interesting to see who his substitute will be for grooming by the Bilderbergers. Next month in Austria may tell.

    The other thing to watch out for is what offers these defunct politicians will receive and when and from whom? Paytime for some of them, I would suspect.

  171. Over the past five years I have not met anyone who admitted to voting for David Cameron in 2010.

    I suspect the same will be true of this ballot just gone: it will be diffcicult to find anyone who admits they voted Camoron in 2015.

    But the real collectors’ item will surely be this: voters in Clacton and Rochester & Strood who voted UKIP in the by-election but then switched to voting Tory in the General Election.

    They will become as rare as hen’s teeth. But they know who they are – you MSM-believing wimps!

    It’s good to know there’s shame in it!

  175. Although I never met anyone personally who admitted to voting Tory in this election gone, I met no shortage of people wanting to display their virtue by smearing Nigel Farage.

    Cameron will use that. If he orders a referendum for 2016, he can say ‘I do keep my promises, see’, and it wil be so far from a general election, who will join Cameron in trying to keep Britain in the EU: Labour, Lib Dem and many other parties. Cameron will also want that referendum out the way so he can get on with xxxxing up the country. Wouldn’t want the referendum to be used as a protest at Cammy. We all remember what happened in 2014’s European Parliament elections, don’t we?

    Farage will be the ‘bogeyman’. The personality by whom you can proclaim your virtue. And the Mail and the Telegraph and Sun will tell you that you will lose your job if you vote to leave the EU.

    The great British disease: ‘hold on to nurse for fear of something worse’ and ‘better the devil you know’ will hold the day as they just have done in this election.

    Because the UK has never had a revolution in modern times, I did wonder whether the people were capable of a quiet, ballot-box, non-violent revolution. And it was Clacton and Rochester & Strood and the European elections that gave me hope.

    The elite were horrified at those results and this time they didn’t make a mistake. They choked off internet debate by hosting debate on their chatbaords but framing it in terms that they wanted, so the censored and so on. And then there were four months of ‘scary’ front pages about Ed and Nippy Sweetie.

    So, no. Not even a ballot-box revolution.

    The best hope is that someone like the Greeks just force their way out of the EU and that brings the whole stinking thing crashing down.

    The Brits are too busy being deferential to Bullingdon Club thugs.

  178. Alexsandr, my hope is that after five years using his underling as a lightning rod for all the blame, this Camoron Mark II brand can become toxified so quickly that an in/out referendum is used to hit him – and hit him hard.

    Even if we can’t cure all the ills of the UK voting system, what a joy it would be to wallop Camoron sideways with an Out vote. How I’d love to see that!

    So bring on the marches and the discord and disharmony. Let’s see if we can’t stir up the punters a bit into hitting Dave in the ballots – hope lingers eternal!

  179. Two Soups May 9th, 2015 – 14:44

    I voted for Cameron in 2010 – or at least I voted for my local Conservative MP. But I’m glad the Tories won this election as the least worst option. There you go.

    As for the Peoples Assembly if you want discord and disharmony to subvert the democratic will of England it looks like you are in good company:-

    THE PEOPLE’S ASSEMBLY IS ORGANISED AND SUPPORTED BY:

    Anti-Academies alliance
    Left Unity
    ASLEF
    Morning Star
    Association of Indian Women
    Muslim Council of Britain
    Black Activists Rising Against Cuts National Assembly of Women
    British Muslim Initiative National Pensioners Convention
    British Pensioners & Trade Unions A.A. National Unemployed Workers Centres
    Campaign Against Climate Change National Union of Journalists (NUJ)
    Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament National Union of Teachers (NUT)
    Campaign for Trade Union Freedom
    New Economics Foundation
    Coalition of Resistance The Peoples Bank UK
    Communication Workers Union (CWU) The People’s Charter
    Communist Party of Britain
    Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS)
    Counterfire
    Rail Maritime and Transport union (RMT)
    Defend the Right to Protest Socialist Resistance
    Disabled People Against the Cuts (DPAC) Society of Sacramental Socialists
    The Distant Voices Stop The Cuts
    Fire Brigades Union (FBU) Stop the War Coalition
    Friends of Al Aqsa Taxpayers Against Poverty
    Friends of Edward Carpenter Trades Union Congress (TUC)
    Greece Solidarity Campaign Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association (TSSA)
    The Green Party University and College Union (UCU)
    Independent Socialist Network Unison
    Indian Workers Association GB Unite the Union
    Institute of Employment Rights War on Want
    Keep our NHS public War on Welfare Petition

    And the communist tossers claim that they are “linked to no political party”.

  180. “The (“anti-austerity/f*ck the Tories”) group has even put together a ‘Anti-Tory Manifesto’ for its acolytes to follow, encouraging a campaign of intimidation and discrimination against Conservatives. Taken from their facebook page, the 16-point plan reads:

    1. If you see a Tory, pin a rosette on them so we know who to kick in the street.
    2. Never shake hands with a Tory.
    3. Never buy or accept a drink from a Tory.
    4. If one of your friends is a Tory, de-friend them and encourage your other friends to do the same.
    5. If you meet a Tory in public, name and shame them.
    6. If you know a Tory at work, start a campaign to get them fired from their job.
    7. If your boss or teacher is a Tory, expose them to your colleagues and demand they leave their post on the grounds of moral incompetence.
    8. Refuse to work for a Tory or, if that jeopardises your livelihood, sabotage the benefits they gain from your work (piss in their soup, overcharge them at the checkout, poor [sic] sugar in their petrol tank, sow salt on their garden, saw through supporting structures, etc.)
    9. Never ever show respect for the property of a Tory . . .
    10. Don’t engage with Tory trolls on social media. If they don’t understand the fundamental obscenity of their beliefs you’re wasting your time.
    11. Stop reading or watching Tory-backed media and entertainment that depicts the working classes as competing monkeys obsessed with celebrity and fame.
    12. The 24% of the electorate that voted Tory are our Enemy. They support a minority government that is waging a violent economic and ideological War against us, and we must fight back!
    13. The wealthiest 20% of our population is 10 times richer than the poorest 20%. It is they, along with the class traitors (cops, city boys, estate agents, etc), that make up the Tory electorate.
    14. Exacerbate, at every opportunity, the opposition between Them and Us.
    15. Scratch a Liberal and they’ll bleed Tory (see the comments below).
    16. This is Civil War.”

    Nice people. As you want also want a bit of discord and disharmony against Cameron maybe you should join them Two Soups?

  181. Colonel Mustard, respect to you for being honest.

    But you mistake my wanting to sow discord and disharmony for endorsing violence. I just want to counter the spin of Lynton Crosby, the Rothermeres, Barcaly Twins et al.

    And as I made very clear in my post, I only want to kick Dave in the ballots – I’m sorry Cameron wasn’t whacked at the ballots in 2010 or in 2015, but I hope now people will start to hold him to account and that at least in a referendum, they might, just for once, see through him.

    I would love Mr Slippery to meet his Waterloo at the polls. I think that’s a fair ambition.

  182. No, Colonel Mustard, you’re just doing what your hero Dave – whom you admit voting for does: you’re spinning and smearing me.

    Don’t spin and smear me, you Dave supporter.

    I made clear I only wanted your hero hit at the ballot box.

  183. You are the one spinning and smearing Two Soups. Dave is not my “hero” and I am not a “Dave supporter”.

    “I made clear I only wanted your hero hit at the ballot box.”

    vs

    “So bring on the marches and the discord and disharmony.”

    And Cameron has just been judged in the polls – in a General Election. He won. 11,334,920 people voted for his party, as is their right. I wasn’t one of them this time so you can pack in your nonsense about “my hero”.

  184. Yes, Colonel, you smear me by leaving out the second sentence, which made clear my ambition:

    “So bring on the marches and the discord and disharmony. Let’s see if we can’t stir up the punters a bit into hitting Dave in the ballots – hope lingers eternal!”

    I understand David Cameron has just won an election. I only have the humble ambition of helping him one day to lose one.

  185. Two Soups May 9th, 2015 – 21:43

    Bugger off, you are on the wrong web site.

  186. I was hoping for a zombie Parliament, vouchsafed by the Fixed Term Parliaments Act (law of unintended …).

    I was hoping for the stalemate wrongly forecast by all the polls. For a sequence of failed attempts at coalition, either imploding under their own contradictions or turfed out with the propulsion of the currency markets.

    I was hoping for a caretaker government that passed about six laws per year, headed by some innocuous old booby like Sir Menzies Campbell. Labour enacted at least one new criminal offence for each day they were in power. A period of legislative silence would be welcome.

    I hoped for a species of deadlock. I can’t really recall when I became a political nihilist. It just crept up by stealth, like a regrettable but unstoppable sclerosis.

  187. David Ossitt @ 23:43

    What an uncharacteristic and if I may say so inapt comment! Could you offer a few words of explanation? Is it based on Two Soups’ contributions over the last couple of weeks?

  188. Andy Car Park

    If a Zombie parliament had been returned, Brussels would simply have increased its contribution to British legislation in proportion. Am I being too nihilstic?

  189. Two soups 20.20
    An excellent analysis
    Already we see the usual suspects (John Major’s Bastards?) taking to the airwaves predicting that Cameron’s negotiations with Europe will fail and their duty is to the Country not the Party.
    331 seats will not be enough and we need to remember that Tory MP’s are older than the average and die off frequently enough to whittle down the majority soon

  190. Malfleur 0209
    Hopes for a deadlocked parliament are the nihilistic point
    Britain has always needed one party in charge
    As was shown by the debacle induced by that sad man Clegg

  191. Telytubby @ 0655

    That is right
    There are 3.89 million people out there ready to vote kipper again. And quite a few who feel conned by the vote ukip get milliband bollocks.

  192. And what of the ‘charismatic’ ed bollocks. Booted by morley and outwood. They found mrs jenkyns way mor charismatic. The declaration was wonderful dont you think.

    Now fuck off ed balls your services are no longer required. B and q are looking for staff.

  193. Two Soups May 9th, 2015 – 21:43

    No. Your first sentence is not modified by your second but stands alone in meaning. You expressed to see marches, discord and disharmony which is precisely what that left wing rabble of malcontents, wrong ‘uns and grievance monkeys gave you yesterday. Your “humble ambition of helping him one day to lose one” is a knot on the same piece of string as those placards “Get the Tories out!”.

    And as if on cue, telemachus slithers in to make you his new friend. Maybe you, he and the “malicious little sh*t” (© Damaris Tighe) can organise another discordant and disharmonious protest march against Dave. Don’t forget your placards.

    The more interesting fact, that might bear more analysis than your long winded brain dumps, is that the UKIP vote, whilst rising into second and third place in many constituencies, did not split the Tory vote or deliver the buoyant one’s 43 marginals. On the contrary the Tories won a majority, however slim, despite the UKIP votes. The combined Tory and UKIP votes exceeded 15 million, 49% of the vote share compared to 30% for Labour. The Labour vote remains almost static to its dependency bloc of public sector workers, academia, benefits seekers and recently imported foreign nationals. Forget the broad church differences on the right, that shows the real political appetite in England and should be a source of comfort.

    UKIP are now the third party in terms of voting share, the number of actual MPs is a red herring for now. The wavering and slightly identity-confused right should not fall for the real left exploiting that to agitate for reform that will undermine the system of returning single constituency representatives to Parliament and give loons like Natalie Bennet more MPs.

    Now, the question is whether Cameron will be clever enough to see the strategic potential of that Tory UKIP voting share.

  194. One day Alexandr the British people will mourn the loss of this giant
    For a start and from day 1 in Westminster PMQ’s will be a pale shadow
    The only good thing to be said is that it gives Superstar Chukka a clear run
    *
    Remember in this game we have only just had the first leg

  195. We are now going to be treated to endless “magnificent superstar” drivel from telemachus extolling the non-existent virtues of the latest re-heated New Labour has-been flavours of the month.

    Already they are bigging up leadership candidates in a kind of X-Factor personality contest rather than engaging in the self-reflection of why they lost. Unless they do that first, collectively, the next figurehead will merely reinforce failure by repeating the same old experiment. Miliband’s farewell speech encouraged that idiocy:-

    “Sorry I failed and I’m off but now I want you to keep on doing the same thing so you will fail too. Bye.”

    This site was supposed to be a refuge from the left, somewhere they don’t get to peddle their interminable agitprop. No wonder the right find it so hard to defeat the left’s bogus narrative when they are constantly shooting themselves in the foot.

  196. Anyone here think there is anyone in the PLP who is a credible leader of the opposition and possible PM.

    I am struggling to think of one.

  197. The active members of the Wall need to decide whether telemachus should be restrained in the cellar, to allow both free speech and speech free from his speech. Let me know what you think. I am not sure that his recent posts, on the day he comes out of the cellar, add anything.

  199. Peter. If we are true libetarians we should allow him to post and we should argue with him ans ridicule him.
    If he is not here how can I remind him about the ‘charismatic ed bollocks’ delightfully decapitated by the giggling mrs jenkyns. The best moment of the night.

    Perhaps you could tweak your software so a link to a you tube movie of his declaration can be added as a post script to anything he posts.

  201. Did anyone catch P.J. o’Rourke giving “A point of View” this morning? I found it very funny and perceptive. After that, it was downhill all the way as BH appears to decided, “Whatever we do, we’re going to be tarred with leftist bias so we may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb”. Nauseating luvvie-fest.

  202. David Ossitt, May 9th, 2015 – 23:16

    Was it the lack of table manners, or the haunting image of Russell Brand?

    That was a timely, measured and, imo, a compassionate intervention, David.

    The commenter’s anguish at the #GE2015 result is palpable. The abandonment of one’s cutlery, mental and otherwise, usually results in an undignified spectacle. In this case it was demonstrated by slurping from both bowls and then, with the whole feckin’ tureen held aloft, gargling!

    Stand fast, lads. KBO!

  203. Andy Car Park, May 9th, 2015 – 23:36

    “Labour enacted at least one new criminal offence for each day they were in power. A period of legislative silence would be welcome.”

    Amen to that!

    Didn’t in 2010 Clegg promise us a “Grand Repeal Act” to undo all the harm that Blair, Irvine, Falconer et all harm done to our traditional & historic freedoms?

    Repealing Harriet Harman’s “Equality Act, 2010” would have been a good start. This Act contained insidious clauses intended to criminalise most of what we used to know and enjoy as “free speech.”

  205. Peter from Maidstone (09:13)

    Let’s see whether the self-imposed declaration of exile holds up. It may not, but if it doesn’t, I’m sure the Colonel will lead the broadside.

    Incidentally, Alexandr, I was unaware that this is a ‘libetarian’ (sic) blog. That is a label that I firmly reject, personally, as it encompasses much that sticks in the craw. Anti-statist does not necessarily mean the kind of laissez faire and dissolute license that is part of the problem. For instance, I’m sure Russell Brand would happily accept the label ‘libertarian’. It’s the sort of thing that leads to public urinals having to be closed due to infestation of his ilk commandeering them for the purposes of cross-hand boogies (or worse).

    Cue ACP.

  207. “The Tory campaign was solely based on lies, mythology and Netanyahu-type scare stories. Their win was based on the gullibility of sufficient numbers”

    Priceless. Nothing to do with the fact that Miliband, his block of granite and his “policies” were unelectable.

    Five minutes in and already their failure is someone else’s fault.

  209. Free speech is one thing. Trolling is another. I have never seen telemachus engage in any reasoned argument or debate. When challenged on any factual points he tends to ignore them, dodge sideways and post an irrelevant assertion or another provocation. Unfortunately he is sly and also known for his outright lies, oft repeated. He is a manipulator of others comments.

    But the real test of merit must be why he is here in the first place. I’d have no problem with the presence of a thoughtful lefty arguing his points with reasoned logic rather than a presumption that his political leanings confer some automatic moral superiority on him and everyone who dissents is a lesser moral being.

  210. There ‘reports of rumours’ 🙂 on social media that it appears that some ballot papers have already been shredded and reports of other tinkering in Thanet, where Farage stood for MP.

    Does anyone have any information on this?

  211. CM
    Labour lost because their core vote in Scotland evaporated into nothing
    They failed to make up for it with gains in England. They failed on so many fronts. I am not
    UKIP failed to get seats cos their jam was too thinly spread. But I am upbeat about that as I think they have laid the foundataions for the next GE. And their council gains can help too.

  212. Colonel Mustard – 12:01

    +1

    Before I have read five words, I can tell it is a troll post. It is most unnerving.

  214. Frank P, May 10th, 2015 – 12:00

    That was a classic – Verity extant, and even Daniel Maris piping up too !

  216. h/t Pat Condell ‏@patcondell 1 minute ago

    “We appreciate the election debacle, but if #Labour could do us one more favour & elect Diane Abbott as the new leader we’d be most grateful.”

  217. RobertC May 10th, 2015 – 12:34

    I didn’t think you were referring to me but thank you for the clarification!

  218. Angela Merkel places a wreath bearing the Russian and German flags at the foot of the monument to the Unknown Warrior in Moscow just one day after her diplomatic absence from the celebrations there of VE Day. This is a slap in the face for the authoritarian law breaker in the White House and his European Gauleitters.

    Do we really want to thrust Germany into the arms of the Russo-Chinese axis? The answer appears to be that someone does.

    ****

    A puny demonstration of a 200-weak Rent-a-Crowd outside No. 10 yesterday scarcely warrants conjuring up the “spectre…haunting Europe”. The spectre is in any event installed in Brussels.

    *****

    Watching the ‘France 24’ English language TV channel, I was interested to watch the following items:

    1. The government of Colombia has announced that it is banning Monsanto’s pesticide “Roundup” which has been used over a long period and over a wide area in his country. The active ingredient, glysophate, destroys legal and illicit crops such as coca alike without discriminating between them and is effective at eliminating people by inducing cancer but without distinguishing between individuals engaged in illicit activities from those going about their lives within the law.

    2. A Vietnamese woman, as a last resort, is filing suit in the French courts against Monsanto and Dow Chemical for the widespread use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam war. The poison not only affected the plant life on which it was indiscriminately dumped from aircraft, but its ill and often mortal effects were passed on to the first and second generations of Vietnamese women who had the misfortune to be under its path.

    The Prince of Wales warned against GMO crops of the kind promoted and marketed by Monsanto and a number of European countries have now banned them. http://www.darkgovernment.com/news/monsanto-dangers-of-genetically-modified-corn/ Monsanto developed Roundup in the 1970s to produce “terminator seeds” which would force farmers to become dependent on seed supplied by Monsanto. http://web.mit.edu/demoscience/Monsanto/about.html No-one less than Princess Anne, another knowledgeable scientist in the royal family, had to be rolled out to discredit her brother in this case as, well, a “loonie and fruitcake” for taking a position against GMO corn and for his pointing out that it was not fully understood what the effects might be.

    Fortunately, the official media has cultivated the idea that the Prince is wacky, so that when he strays from the Bilderberg narrative, which in this case is that there is nothing to worry about in ingesting mortal toxins or allowing one or two companies to monopolise the supply of seeds, it is not too great a task to put him back on message. Whether this would have been the case if he were Prince Albert iss another matter.

  219. DM: Liam Byrne FINALLY admits leaving ‘there is no money’ note was wrong

    No, Liam, leaving ‘no money’ was wrong, but leaving the note was a momentary flash of reality and truthfulness.

  221. “A Vietnamese woman, as a last resort, is filing suit in the French courts against Monsanto and Dow Chemical for the widespread use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam war. The poison not only affected the plant life on which it was indiscriminately dumped from aircraft, but its ill and often mortal effects were passed on to the first and second generations of Vietnamese women who had the misfortune to be under its path.”

    She should file suit against the communist Vietnamese government for starting the war in the first place. If the North had not embarked on a war of aggression against the South no Agent Orange would have been used.

  222. EC (12:23)

    Christ! Only two years ago and nostalgia has already set in. We were steaming then. Have to get fit for the next five years, though the spirit is willing the flesh is weak. Must do some research on Kinnock Jr and find out what his current residential/tax/sexual arrangements are. He’s obviously being groomed as the new saviour of British socialism.

    I miss Verity; sad that we’ll probably never know what happened to her. If you’re out there V – give us a clue!

  226. Wonderful and poignant example of the gradual decline of Britain in four successive segments of Sky News:

    First: John Humphreys, a Chelsea pensioner relates his exploits first in Western Desert, both clearing German mines and laying British ones: escaped from PoW camp in Ancona walking for days to meet up with invading British colleagues . After respite in Blighty volunteered for the paras, fought at Arnhem, captured again after bloody battle, one of the few left standing after ‘The Bridge Too Far’ – escaped again. Which means he has to be in his nineties. Looks 20 years younger. Dignified, matter of fact and a chest full of well earned medals.

    Second: cut to Baftas, labour luvvies to a man (and woman) in all their finery (including the egregious Jon (The Lizard’ Snow) getting putty medals and great wealth for ‘reporting’ or make-believe stories about the war and terrorism.

    Third: cut to demo of the unwashed outside No. 10. Rag-tag-and-bobtails of anarchy and the far left, on the day that Marxism has had its nose rubbed in it and real heroes like Humphreys are remembering the colleagues who fell around them – the greatest generation, indeed.

    Fourth: Tessa ‘mafia moll’ Jowell, elevated to the red benches despite her ex (?) husband’s dealings with the Italian mob (how could she have possibly known?) pontificating on how the electorate got it all wrong and what they must do to return her party to power. Fuck off you pan-faced bitch!

    Update: George ‘Muff Diver’ Galloway:
    “I was rrrrorrbed!” (By a Muzzie – and a woman, to boot). Bwaaahahaha! YCMIU!!

  227. How these treacherous scum can show their faces on this weekend of solemn remembrance …..?? (Spits!!)

    And its been one long Labour party political broadcast on both the Been an Sky, as they discuss what their next patina of camouflage they will use in the next subterfuge.

    Now Tristram Hunt is at it! What part of the phrase ‘Fuck’ and ‘Off’ you boggle eyed buffoon.

  230. One last thing, then I’m done for the day! Why has there only been one mention in passing, on the Daily Politics, I think it was; that during the coalition Cameron allowed the LibDumbs to stuff the Red Benches with their own dross until they now have a majority in the Upper House – and will use it to thwart any reforms the Tories wish to enact, despite the fact that have shaken off the millstone of Cleggover and his queer cabal on the green benches? There may be trouble ahead … Cue Fred Astaire (or was it Jarvis Astaire – or perhaps Jarvis Cocker) after this weekend of ups and downs and utter lunacy, anything is possible, so let’s settle for Fred:

    https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=let%27s+face+the+music+and+dance&rlz=1Y3NDUG_enGB553GB553&oq=letsfwce+tjhe+music+and+dance&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l3.16862j0j4&sourceid=chrome-mobile&espv=1&ie=UTF-8

  231. Events, dear boy, events:

    EU plans to impose migrant quotas forcing states to ‘share’ burden of influx
    Proposal to divide up numbers between member countries in wake of Mediterranean crisis could pit Germany, which backs scheme, against UK
    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/10/european-commission-migrant-quota-plan-mediterranean-crisis

    So, will Cameron bow to Angela Merkel, or will he begin to realise that the EU is out of control and will destroy everything rather than admit their goals are unobtainable?

    I expect we have taken more than our fair share of immigrants over the years, but they are now in the wrong category to count.

    At least there is one that sees sense:
    “Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, a leading hardliner on immigration, described the commission proposals as mad and pledged to defy Brussels.

    He said: “The European concept of ‘someone letting immigrants into their country’ and then ‘distributing’ them among the other member states is a mad and unfair idea.””

  234. Anne WK (May 4th 11:40)

    Your wish came true! Now let’s hope that Peter has traced Verity and our week will be perfect, non? 🙂

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