Brown Bottles It

[London Calling]

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.....................................................What is annoying me is how the media is progressing our Political system down to a common denominator of two men, Brown and Cameron.

We vote for parties in our nation, we vote for a broad range of policies. We may love them of all of one party and detest everything the "other" lot have. We may love the mix.

We all know, that there are a broad range of Politicians running the Government, I know a few, Ed Balls for example. Until the Blair period, I used to know them all front bench and back bench.

But now, who the **** are they.

Now whether you like Cameron or not. I think he opening up some fresh ways of thinking, especially for the Conservatives. But who are the rest? Who is leading on Law and Order, on Defence, on the NHS? It is not a one man Party (unlike the Liberals).


I want our media, to cover the full spectrum of canditure and policies, not just headline grabbing antics such as visits to see our boys in Irag and petty proposed tax cuts.

This is not the USA and focusing on two men just dumbs down Politics, demeans Government and reduces public interest.

 

[DJ Leon]

Eh? I've been arguing on this thread my views. I'm merely pointing out that Herr T thinks that people who liked Thatcher are irrelevant and redundant. Easier to dismiss your opponents than debate isn't it?

Note that I say people and not 'me' as I was never a fan of Thatcher so do not include myself in that bracket. Jumping to conclusions again, eh?

What conclusions have I jumped to? Have I been talking about Thatcher?

I just think that claiming someone is dismissing you just because they disagree with you is lazy.

No offence, I just hate it when these kinds of debate degenerate into an argument about 'NSC fascists' not allowing anyone to have an opinion.

 

[DJ Leon]

Oh purlease.

How nice what a chummy word Oh purlease, can I do it it again Oh purlease, faint whiff of lavender there mate, one more before I go again Oh purlease.

TA TA KUNT

Yeah, thanks for that. Quality post.

 

[Pavilionaire]

I agree with most of what you say LC, although I disagree that the Liberals are a one-man party - Chris Huhn, Charles Kennedy and Simon Hughes piss all over the Labour/Tory lightweights on QuestionTime.

 

[Barrel of Fun]

Chris Huhn, Charles Kennedy and Simon Hughes piss all over the Labour/Tory lightweights on QuestionTime.

I thought Charles had stopped doing that, since he brought his drinking under control.

 

[NMH]

What conclusions have I jumped to? Have I been talking about Thatcher?

I just think that claiming someone is dismissing you just because they disagree with you is lazy.

No offence, I just hate it when these kinds of debate degenerate into an argument about 'NSC fascists' not allowing anyone to have an opinion.

That's how it often degenerates DJ, they are always calling me a fascist or 'megalomaniac' when they don't have the intelligence or capability to tender an adequate response.

It's by-far easier to do that than think for one moment that (the alternative viewpoint) might be right, or even "hmm, he might have a point there, it's possible that I might need to adjust my p.o.v. and absorb some of what has been said".
It's all seen in either black or white for some people, no matter how you show them other colours.

Now watch some idiot jump to say "that's my complaint against YOU, NMH, you don't consider mine or anyone else's point etc"

Anyway - Hilter, a "fascist" Whatever will they say NEXT?!
It's outrageous.

 

[sten_super]

I just think that claiming someone is dismissing you just because they disagree with you is lazy.

No offence, I just hate it when these kinds of debate degenerate into an argument about 'NSC fascists' not allowing anyone to have an opinion.

Old people with old, irrelevant and redundant views maybe.

I'd call that fairly dismissive.

That's how it often degenerates DJ, they are always calling me a fascist or 'megalomaniac' when they don't have the intelligence or capability to tender an adequate response.

It's by-far easier to do that than think for one moment that (the alternative viewpoint) might be right, or even "hmm, he might have a point there, it's possible that I might need to adjust my p.o.v. and absorb some of what has been said".
It's all seen in either black or white for some people, no matter how you show them other colours.

Now watch some idiot jump to say "that's my complaint against YOU, NMH, you don't consider mine or anyone else's point etc"

I want to resist the bait, I really really do, but work is so boring, I need to find something to occupy my time.

You do make some valid points, but you are (whether you like it or not) just as blinkered into thinking that you are right and everyone else is wrong as Buzzer or I am.

Gordon Brown has come out today and said that he considered holding a snap election. He then ultimately didn't. If you want to think that's what he had planned all along, and that he played David Cameron (as well as, it would seem, the entire of the Fourth Estate) like a fool, then you are free to think that. I, for what it's worth, don't agree. And there seems far more evidence (in the form of opinions of people who know, and in the form of election planning that Labour undertook) to suggest that he was seriously considering it and then pulled out due to something that happened in the past 1/2 weeks than there is that it was all part of some cunning master plan.

 

[NMH]

I'd call that fairly dismissive.



I want to resist the bait, I really really do, but work is so boring, I need to find something to occupy my time.

You do make some valid points, but you are (whether you like it or not) just as blinkered into thinking that you are right and everyone else is wrong as Buzzer or I am.

Gordon Brown has come out today and said that he considered holding a snap election. He then ultimately didn't. If you want to think that's what he had planned all along, and that he played David Cameron (as well as, it would seem, the entire of the Fourth Estate) like a fool, then you are free to think that. I, for what it's worth, don't agree. And there seems far more evidence (in the form of opinions of people who know, and in the form of election planning that Labour undertook) to suggest that he was seriously considering it and then pulled out due to something that happened in the past 1/2 weeks than there is that it was all part of some cunning master plan.

Well, I would think any politician is entitled to 'consider' doing whatever he likes!

However, if he HAD called a snap election, he knows that there would be many (esp on the tory bench) that would call his subsequent activities with Iraq and our troops, a cheap trick (like the right hon. David Davis did anyway, regardless of any mitigating factors, saying he should have announced his intent to go to Iraq ahead of time!! what a complete tory IDIOT!) The troops certainly wouldn't want to be 'used' as a political ploy, neither would Brown or any sensible person in the House, want to be associated with such. Wiser to eliminate it as a factor, get the important life and death activity done asap. Politics should ALWAYS come in a far 2nd to that (as someone should tell GWBush).

ANOTHER issue, is that, as a recently repatriated British subject - I have ONLY JUST got my voting papers through the post! I imagine that, owing to the postal strikes going on, there are some who have NOT received theirs, especially international voters.
I would then also suggest that, REGARDLESS of who I and anyone else is voting for, the opportunity would be somewhat curtailed

Thankfully Mr BROWN has been smart enough NOT to have gone ahead with any 'quickie' election, and thought about it. Apparently, Mr Cameron has NOT been as considerate, in INVITING AND REQUESTING an immediate election!

You see? There really is NO reason for me to keep looking at David Cameron as a good politician let alone potential PM - at every juncture where I am asked to consider the argument in his favour, the pendulum swings FAR away from his side. He just doesn't tick ANY of the boxes, whenever they are put in front of me!!

I might still look at other candidates, but as far as the arguments and blitherings against Brown from the tories - they just fall really short on every front.

 

[Albion Dan]

Perhaps you'd like to put your concerns to Alex Hawkes, tax correspondent for Accountancy Age. He seems to think the figures DO add up.

http://taxhack.accountancyage.com/2007/10/accountancy-age.html

Still - what does he know, eh?

Even he admits they got their number from The Observer, and says it could be 150k instead of 200.and no one knows how much money any of the Non Doms have got, we are talking about nurses from overseas as much as Millionaires. They wouldnt be able to pay the sums being talked about at all.

 

[NMH]

It might be interesting to talk more about Brown once he's been in the office long enough to make his own presence and intent felt.

A snap election would have taken that out of the equation.

Withdrawing troops from Iraq makes him a bit of a bad-doggy, if he was thinking of becoming anyone's 'poodle', at least.

 

[Bry Nylon]

What? You're making it up. He said no such thing. This is the first time he has directly talked about the election.

Cameron wanted an election. Brown wouldn't give him one - as it were. Now he's accusing him of being 'indecisive'. You end up thinking 'you what'? Brown only made one statement on this, and it was the decision that he said he's not going to the country. You can't get much more decisive than that. All the rest of it was media-led bullshit, gullibly swallowed up by far too many.

The real apparent reason is obviously the polls didn't look too good for Brown, but then, so what? It's two years into a term of office and it rarely does for any government then.

When the dust settles, what you'll find actually has happened is that Cameron has been suckered into revealing what scant hard policies his party actually had. He could have kept quiet, and issued his party's politics once the election had been called. But he couldn't resist it. It was a game of brinksmanship - Brown played the media off against the Tories, and in the end, Cameron blinked.

That, to me, is very FAR from a sign of weakness within the PM's thinking.

Cameron may believe he has won the battle - especially given the headlines - but Brown has won the war. How? He is still PM, at least for another two years, and there is nothing Cameron can do about it. But that's politics for you.

Surely even you don't believe any of that do you? Every single senior political correspondent from both television and the broadsheet press have been saying how Ed Balls and Ed Milliband have been constantly on the phone, briefing them about the possibilty of an autumn election - ever since the Labour conference. They were positively salivating at the prospect of it.

But when it became clear that Brown might not achieve a majority of 66+, they started rowing back from that position, resulting in this weekend's climb-down, and Brown's admission, at the No 10 press conference today, that he sound have made a decision earlier.

Brown has been made to look foolish, indecisive and obsessed with his own mandate. As the political correspondent of the Indie said today, all the good work of his first 100 days has been undone in one stroke. Brown, from a position of strength, has allowed himself to be pushed into a corner by a weak opposition.

Now that really is politics for you.

 

[NMH]

Surely even you don't believe any of that do you? Every single senior political correspondent from both television and the broadsheet press have been saying how Ed Balls and Ed Milliband have been constantly on the phone, briefing them about the possibilty of an autumn election - ever since the Labour conference. They were positively salivating at the prospect of it.

But when it became clear that Brown might not achieve a majority of 66+, they started rowing back from that position, resulting in this weekend's climb-down, and Brown's admission, at the No 10 press conference today, that he sound have made a decision earlier.

Brown has been made to look foolish, indecisive and obsessed with his own mandate. As the political correspondent of the Indie said today, all the good work of his first 100 days has been undone in one stroke. Brown, from a position of strength, has allowed himself to be pushed into a corner by a weak opposition.

Now that really is politics for you.

I'm not sure how anyone can perceive Brown to be "pushed into a corner", but that is the press for you - they will champion the cause of their own party by throwing mud at a wall just to see what sticks.
It defies belief how his rather worthy decisions to visit Iraq, then withdraw our troops from there, has been eclipsed at home by simplistic posturing, by an opposition who just see those normally-hugely-popular major political decisions as a threat to their chances of gaining any votes.

If "come on and call an election NOW Gordon, if you have the BOTTLE" can effectively wipe "all the good work of his first 100 days" off the slate - then perhaps we CAN have a situation where a dodgy vote count can hi-jack a country's government!
Watch out for Cornwall next election, it might be our very own 'Florida'!

 

[sten_super]

I'm not sure how anyone can perceive Brown to be "pushed into a corner", but that is the press for you - they will champion the cause of their own party by throwing mud at a wall just to see what sticks.

So you're not sure how anyone can perceive it, yet hundreds (when we count up all the political analysts) of experts and (probably) millions of the general public can perceive it. Does that not suggest that is perhaps YOU that is a little bit short-sighted, rather than everyone else?

And I don't know why you persist with the argument that the whole of the Fourth Estate is anti-Labour. I don't know where you got it from, and you, I, and everyone else knows that it patently isn't true.