Where I stand

I thought it'd be interesting to take the political compass test (for what must be around the 10th time now) and see how it compares to previous scores.

Economic Left/Right: 3.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 2.10

Interesting result seeing as the the last three I've done have crept from centre-left to centre-right and now clearly into the 'right' zone. I feel the result is however very accurate based on the way my beliefs and views have been shaped through academia and recent events.

Billy

The first day of a new Britain

I for one have waited for this day for a long time. New Labour is gone and the Conservative party are in (although accompanied by a few Liberals).

David Cameron is now instated in his rightful place as Prime Minister.

Prime Minister David Cameron and his deputy Nick Clegg

I will as ever be an ally of the Conservative party and will defend them first; just like the rest of the nation, I eagerly await to see whether this shotgun marriage lasts and of course wish both parties all the best.

The grey clouds are breaking up over Britain and the sun is rearing its head. The end of a tyrannous, freedom restricting, penny squeezing, illegitimate government and the dawning of a new era.

Billy

Britain in the gallows

307 seats was not enough for an overall Conservative majority, 22 short of my prediction and a few short of others but nonetheless it's the situation we're in.

Due to the indecisiveness of the British electorate we're now facing more and more talks between the parties in an effort to reach some form of deal.

Nick Clegg came out and said he'd happily support whichever party had the highest % of the vote/number of seats, the Conservatives did so and have entered talks. However, out of the blue today Gordon Brown sticks his oar in and comes up with perhaps the most selfish, anti-democratic and ridiculous of resignation speeches.

He says he'll offer the Lib Dems AV, 4 more months of his unelected self (even after he lost a General Election) and another term for Labour and another unelected premier.
Whichever way it's looked at, Brown has tried to surface from his sunken boat, latch onto the Liberals and block David Cameron's deserved place at Number 10.

It's pitiful that he'd risk national economic, political and social safety just because he was too stubborn to quit on Friday morning. Now we face the threat of not only a non-elected coalition government, but one comprised completely of 'want nots'.
The nation voted in favour of the Conservatives, not enough to give them a parliamentary majority, but still a majority nonetheless and now the losing parties have the audacity to club together and still fall short of the magic 326 number.
How fantastic, we'll end up with a rainbow coalition which incorporates Scottish nationalists and a Green! (If they all join in)

Britain needs a PM and it needs one as soon as possible. If we are without a leader by Friday, the market will start to fight back. If we enter the next week without one it could spell out a very tragic story for the pound.

The Liberals should form pact with the Conservatives to help them through a Queen's speech, giving George Osbourne the chance to reveal the full extent of the Labour debt and then release the Conservatives plans leading to another General Election.

IF Labour end up in number 10 it will be a dark, dark day for the nation and Britain might have to kick the chair from beneath itself before the world aims the revolver.

Billy.

Decision Time!

Long time no post what with re-starting Uni and having the odd deadline to meet and of course general procrastination!

So today it happens, the event billed as the 'Tightest Election of this generation' and various synonymous terms.

My predictions

• Conservative commanding majority of 2... Would prefer more but one can't be too sure
• Lib Dem votes are far lower than opinion polls
• Labour fare okay but lose majority, Brown resigns after June 1
• BNP win a seat or at least come a close 2nd
• UKIP win the most seats amongst the 'others'

Having told the local Lib Dem candidate to his face and a Labour campaigner to his that I'll be voting Conservative, I best go put my money where my mouth is and cross the box next to Nicky Morgan (Loughborough).

I'll be watching the results as they come in either drowning my sorrows or celebrating... I hope for the sake of this country it's the latter!

Billy

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