If you can work and you're not... You get sweet FA!

A poster which cannot be tampered with by the cyber graffiti artists... An honest and appealing campaign which surely secures more Conservative votes.

The money for nothing society could well be over if you place a 'X' in the box next to your Tory candidate. David Cameron's new incentive to reverse years of Labour's sympathy to those who can work but choose not to (those you'd usually see on Jeremy Kyle).

"We will say to people if you can work and you want to work, we will do everything we can to help you.

"But people who can work, who choose not to work, you cannot not go on claiming welfare like this."

David Cameron (20/4/10)

For far too long people have sat at home and claimed money from the taxpayer whilst being fully able to work. I won't be naive and say this is the day we catch them all and erase the benefit culture but a sweeping reform should do more than the 'No If's or But's' adverts.

The audacity of Yvette Cooper (Secretary of state for Work and Pensions) to say it will cut jobs further exposes the futile brains at work in the Labour team. What this will do will give us a clear number of how many unemployed people there really are in the UK (reaching over 2.5m today) and will also fill a few gaps left by the Labour party.

Unlike the Lib Dems who have conjured up financial statistics and imaginary millions in saying they will stop tax evasion, the Tories have given a method on how they will carry out one of the most needed changes in the UK today.

Cameron is saying what so many think. A vote winner for many I'm sure.

Billy

It was a decent wage!

How kind of Gordon Brown, paying his cleaner what he considers a decent wage!

Rather than being a typical employer and giving his maid just the standard national wage he dug deep and gave her that little extra... Shame it wasn't his money to be giving!

Yes, having a cleaner may be an acceptable expense and of course having to juggle between two houses whilst managing your family and a nation is no easy feat but the sheer audacity of trying to back up his claim as a 'decent wage'.

It's so easy to spend money which isn't yours, but when it belongs to the tens of millions of British taxpayers one has to draw the motives into question.
Gordon then, when told to repay ended up giving more than he was asked and in doing so feels he deserves some kind of redemption... Give it a rest Gordon, as the Prime Minister you should be setting the golden example and not claiming anything unnecessary.
I'm sure a Prime Ministerial wage (although reputedly he accepts a lower wage) can cover a good quality cleaner who will work for minimum wage however,if it were his own money, honest Gordon would prefer to give her a decent one ;)

Source: SkyNews
Billy

The hollowness of 'Cleggamania'

Cue the confetti and fireworks as the triumphant knight in shining yellow armour stands outside the doors of Number 10 with the recently knighted Sir Vince Cable by his side...

Another 20 Mums standing outside of a school on a sunny afternoon have been probed deeply by pollmasters and the results are in, Nick Clegg is the nations saviour. A man who this time last week was known by a very small section of society has now all of a sudden become somewhat of an idol across the UK... Not bad for 90 minutes of mediocre work.

Here's the thing, since the first 'Leaders' Debate', Nick Clegg has become a household name, his performance has been hailed as a 'breath of fresh air' and 'what the country needs'.

We've seen poll surges like never before showing support for the Liberal Democrats to be reaching unforeseeable heights (topping a YouGov poll (18/4/10) by 1%!).
All over sites such as facebook and twitter, people are coming out of their political shells and pledging an allegiance to a man who they discovered by chance last Thursday evening.

Everyone knows who he is,
do they know what he is?

But I have to ask the same question I have since the boom of 'Cleggamania'... Do people realise that they're voting for a party and not a personality?

Ask any of the newly christened Liberal Democrat supporters some of their party's policies... Very few will be able to name them or will respond by calling a Conservative voter a 'fascist' or quoting Clegg's joyous rhetoric that they're voting to change the old and tired two party system!

Dozens will slam David Cameron and his Eton/Oxbridge education... Clegg went to a top London independent school and then onto Cambridge where he studied Archaeology and Anthropology... At least Cameron is well versed in Politics, Philosophy and Economics; shame on him for achieving a first at arguably the best University in the world. How dare he!
We can't say the same of Clegg though can we because he's new and fresh and most certainly not one of those evil Tories!

I think the point I'm making is quite clear, people are looking face value at Clegg and comparing him to their skewed pre-conceptions of the other two parties. With the Liberals having very little concrete history the only ideas people have of them are that they sit on the fence and advocate the odd joint or two.

Let's have a look at some key points from the Lib Dem manifesto and see whether it is the fantastic nation changing doctrine it'll soon be billed as or whether cult of personality has reared its ugly head into our political system.

• Ruling out the Trident nuclear programme and 'like-for-like' replacements... Will save £100bn

Brilliant... Remove the nation's nuclear deterrent and give Britain its final coffin nail. Why would you wish to be unarmed in this current world?
Yes, America an Russia have once more depleted their arms but they still have the power in their arsenal to end the world 20 times over, luckily for us they're our 'allies' and shouldn't be sending any attacks our way soon, but what of rouge states that are proliferating nuclear material such as North Korea or Iran?
We drop Trident (or replacements), save £100bn (Lib Dem figures), have a nuke free nation and then get a few mega tonnes of Iranian uranium bombard our streets... We gain £100bn but lose over 60 million people. Hyperbolic and theoretical but totally plausible. We would be sending a child into a fight against a man wearing brass knuckles.
A contradiction to their manifesto pledge of keeping our troops equipped surely!

• Scrapping the National Curriculum in favour of a new 'Minimum Curriculum Entitlement'

I admit, the National Curriculum is flawed. It's forever being tampered with and consists of hundreds of pages worth of over simplified instructions but why would we want a minimum? Surely that's just a sugarcoat to make under performance seem more acceptable.
So what is this MCE? According to the Lib Dem website (Link), it will be the slimming down of the current 600+ page NC.
Fair enough but what changes will be made? How will it affect pupils currently in the school system? Will it and the proposed 'General Diploma' devalue the GCSE/O/A-Levels of millions?
All we know is that there will be less tests for little kids to get stressed over...

• Raising £17bn by re-jiggering the tax system and distributing the money to the people, not to repair the budget deficit.

Fantastic news... On your first £10,000 you will not pay tax (try not to earn any more though, you'll regret it!) and even better you'll get £700 from the government in savings.
Of course the surges in capital gains tax, theoretical £3bn from aeronautical taxation and the air of uncertainty as to who really gains anything is forgotten because Vince Cable has become a celebrity politician who's risen out of our archaic two-party system and has fended off Alistair Darling and George Osbourne.
£4.6bn will going back into the nations coffers because the Liberals will hunt down every single tax evader and shake them by the ankles until every last penny hits the deck... No other government in history has ever tried to stop tax evasion and here come the Super LibDems ready to change that for good. Was the sarcasm strong enough?

Above I've given three Policies from the recent Lib Dem manifesto.

They may not relate directly back to you or the facebook generation of voters but do they not seem a bit far-fetched? Too ambiguous?
The Liberals have told us how honest they're being with the public. How they happily published economic tables in their manifesto but when you really read into it, £17bn comes in the form of theoretical scenarios and numbers plucked from the air.

A vote for Lib Dem is a vote for a hung parliament. What benefit is there in that?

The UK will look unstable from the inside to those outside and without a clear mandate we have a very scary situation whereby we do not have a firm leadership and our system will be hanging in jeopardy.

This Thursday, Clegg will face a stern grilling on his foreign policy which by the looks of it wants Britain to sign every dotted line the EU dishes out and increases our national expenditure on aid. His 'plucked from the air' numbers will be roasted and mutilated before being served as a worthless entrée before the nation.

Instead of saying how much you love Nick Clegg, remember you aren't voting for him (Unless you live in Sheffield Hallam), you're voting for his party and their policies and then when you've thought of that, say why.
If a person gives me a justified reason as to why they're voting Lib and details how their manifesto affects them so positively I will be more than happy to accept their view but if all they can tell me is that I'm an elitist, fascist, Thatcher loving Tory who wants to suck the land dry I'll just simply have to tell them not to waste their vote.

Judging a book by its cover is cliché and generally discouraged but somehow people are judging before knowing the books name!

Billy

The First Live Debate

The Leaders Debate: ITV

The stage has been set and the weeks of anticipation are up. Tonight we see the first ever UK leaders debate.
Will it prove to be a major success that opens the lid on politics and reveals who our party leaders actually are or will it be a total failure?
It's time to see whether this tried and tested US norm can work in a UK setting!

Brown vs Cameron vs Clegg... Head to head

Domestic affairs

So then, those who watched sat and endured 90 minutes of a suped up 'Question Time' (or as the ever comedic Brown called it, 'Answer Time').
How did it go? Well firstly, the format has to be addressed. Surely Gordon Brown should have taken centre stage as he is meant to be the one in power. Understandably, those arranging the positions were probably using a degree of foresight by putting David Cameron in the middle or were they putting him in a corner?

The result of the evening was rather predictable. Brown and Cameron were lured into fighting each other in their little corner allowing Nick Clegg to appear the more attractive candidate. Surely anyone who has an inkling of political know-how could see the obviousness of the situation, even if it wasn't purposeful it was clearly evident that Nick Clegg was destined to seem the better man, a token victory.
Although yes, he was confident, he did argue his case and he did engage with the actual questions moreso, everything he said was purely theoretical. His party's brand of liberalism is untested and almost unknown in a British political arena, the party can say pretty much what they like as they have nothing to lose.
As a performer, Clegg was clear, straightforward and very collected and with his talk of 'decent, open politics', it is a no-brainer as to why he came across (to the panels) as the better man.

David Cameron spent much of the evening being stared and glowered at by Brown but on the whole performed very well, he acted naturally, he spoke how we would if at PMQs, a constituency or one of his frequent podcasts; with confidence, understanding and vigour.
His rhetoric that 'Britain can do better' was echoed in almost every answer he gave and rather interestingly he honestly admitted that the Labour party 'haven't always been wrong'.
Body specialist analysts today are claiming that he was staring out into the audience too imperially and unlike his yellow counterpart wasn't staring 'down the barrel' and at the home audience. Cameron was being himself once more in this instance, he was looking at the people around him, the people that were asking of him and not necessarily at those who were sat down at the other end of a TV screen.

Brown, like Cameron was himself last night and in no way is that a good thing. He gave us all a history lesson laced with hefty dollops of policy and what he had done... Gordon we don't need you to tell us what you've done. We can see the results for ourselves!
Another typical Brownism that has come into fruition recently are his attempts to be funny or involve some kind of humour. Tell me, what relevance to a question on burglaries and crime reduction does a poster of David Cameron or mentions of Lord Ashcroft actually bear?!
He's tried it so many times but the only one who was actually laughing was Gordon himself.
I did like how shocked and sickened Brown said he was over the expenses scandal, especially after he paid for a maid service using taxpayer money; she must've left a stain.

The moment of the evening for me came in the form of Joel Weiner's dramatic return to the fray of politics... Evidence that the audience was to a degree hand-picked thanks to the inclusion of the young Jewish political celebrity who was upset at competition in schools... My heart truly bleeds.

Having left school myself only last year, I know what it is like to be in this apparent minefield of exams and pressures... The real fear at schools should be the lack of power given to teachers and as Mr.Cameron pointed out, the weakness of headteachers who are being held to ransom by 'Appeals panels'. How the teachers have now become the children in the classroom!
I have been in classes of 2 pupils and classes of 32 pupils and now at University over 200 students all crammed into one room... Mr Clegg's 20 pupil infant school school and 16 pupil secondary school proposals will do little; if a child wants to learn it will go to school, do the extra reading and strive to be the best (Sorry Joel, competition is unavoidable), those who don't want to learn won't learn. If they cause disruption to a class they should be isolated, that way they've got no audience and if they're still not working it's a waste of the taxpayers money to keep them in school, especially at KS3 level.

I sat for the full 90 minutes last night frantically tapping away on my laptop making pages and pages worth of notes on what was said and how I read it. To me, a piece of revision which may come in handy but also a good place to draw evidence for this piece from.
I could go into detail on every single question however I'll just highlight what I found to be the most prominent points.


Gordon Brown

• Continually mentioned how he would make things different, when told his party had 13 years to do so and hadn't he froze.
• Thought that Clegg was on his side. Was rather abruptly shot down.
• Found it relevant to mention the 'X-Factor' , 'Britain's Got Talent' and various media outlets in what was meant to be a serious political debate.
• Attacked the Conservatives whenever possible but laid off the Liberal Democrats.
• Is already putting his novelty desk lamps into boxes.

Nick Clegg

• Used his allotted time well, answered clearly and made a good impression.
• Continually played on 'Old Party' system; Table football politics... Red vs Blue.
• Wanted a consensus on health care and asked other leaders to set aside differences on the issue.
• Tackled Cameron on spending cuts.
• Unable to justify £17bn spending gap in manifesto and on give-aways of £700 for taxpayer.

David Cameron

• Alerted viewers to Brown's campaign of 'Fearing the Conservatives', offering the public a government which works on hope and not fear.
• Unable to give clear figures when pressed by Brown. Will need to be more open in future debates or could face problems.
• Very honest detailing on his values; will support those who work hard, are ill or in need.
• Questioned useless bureaucracy and continually referred to cutting waste which Brown could not justify.
• Looked like a leader, looked like a man who can take the country where it needs to be.

So there you have it, my view of how the events unfolded. You may agree, you may not but realistically there is not much that can be said until the 2nd and 3rd legs of these debates kick off.
The popular polls put it: Clegg 1 - Cameron - 0 - Brown - 0... We'll all have to see how this translates into voters in the upcoming weeks.

What will be required next time?

I think it's fair to say that the next debate on SkyNews will be interesting indeed, what will the leaders take forward, what will be different and what will stay the same. If Clegg can pull off another decent performance he will gain some credible support however Cameron will be smarting from what has appeared to be a defeat and of course Gordon will be there too keep an eye on things ;).

Hello...

Hello to all who come across this page,

I thought I best start posting a blog rather than just posting the odd comment on news articles across the web or muttering thoughts away to myself. I suppose this medium gives an opportunity to throw your view out there and see what people may think of it... So why not give it a try?!

I'm a 19 year old student reading International Relations and Politics at Loughborough University and have a huge interest in the British political system, its workings, whys and whatfors.
I'm also partial to political philosophies and the history surrounding both it and politics worldwide.

What with the British General Election looming and the hysteria of the press giving a sly spin on every matter imaginable I thought it'd only be fair if I threw in my two cents and then if I get the hang of it, I'll post on all sorts of pieces from around the world which pique my interest and give you 'politics; my view'.

Yours,

Billy