BS: The truth about Clegg...

Subject: BS: The truth about Clegg...
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Sep 11 - 05:28 PM

With greetings to the LibDem party conference in Birmingham this week...

This explains a lot

Subject: RE: BS: The truth about Clegg...
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 17 Sep 11 - 05:33 PM

Oh dear, more cheap shots at politicians. Kevin, I thought better of you.

Subject: RE: BS: The truth about Clegg...
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 17 Sep 11 - 05:42 PM

Stung you has he MGoH?

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: The truth about Clegg...
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 18 Sep 11 - 03:59 AM

Cleggs don't sting, they bite, Camerons whipping boy does neither, he's all talk.

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: The truth about Clegg...
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 18 Sep 11 - 05:44 AM

An alternative hypothesis is that Cleggy is the hero of the Labour Movement.

He couldn't do a deal with Labour - too unpopular at the time - so he is wrestling with the Tories and showing how unreasonable and selfish they are - whilst Labour reorganises and gets a leader and policies that can win the next election.

No, I don't believe it either.

L in C#

Subject: RE: BS: The truth about Clegg...
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 18 Sep 11 - 06:39 AM

What? That bloke in last of the summer wine and Wallace and Grommit? Surely he is pretty harmless...

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: The truth about Clegg...
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 18 Sep 11 - 09:20 AM

Good point Dave I shouldn't have called him Cleggy - it sounds like a term of endearment - which was not intended at all.

L in C#

Subject: RE: BS: The truth about Clegg...
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Sep 11 - 12:21 PM

'He couldn't do a deal with Labour - too unpopular at the time' There was also the little matter that their combined total of parliamentary seats would not have produced a majority.

Subject: RE: BS: The truth about Clegg...
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Sep 11 - 02:32 PM

The thing is, he seems to lack any sense of tactics or strategy. The election put him in a strong position, compared to the other two parties. They needed him, he didn't need them. He threw a winning hand away for the flummery of cabinet office and the paper title of "Deputy Prime Minister".

He's destroyed his party, colluded in a disastrous reorganisation of the NHS, and a raft of policies that go clean against his party's principles. He's very likely ensured that Scotland will vote for independence, which should ensure a Tory government in Westminster for the foreseeable future.

A Gadfly? He should be flattered by the comparison.

Subject: RE: BS: The truth about Clegg...
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 18 Sep 11 - 03:38 PM

More like a flea, irritating but won't do any lasting damage.

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: The truth about Clegg...
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 18 Sep 11 - 04:44 PM

I am concerned that McGrath may be right as to the consequences of Scottish independence. How can people be such venal deluded fools as to kowtow to this corrupt elite?

Subject: RE: BS: The truth about Clegg...
From: oggie
Date: 18 Sep 11 - 06:06 PM

He was on a loser whatever he did. He and Labour didn't make a majority. If Cameron had formed a minority Government the LDs would have voted against him sooner rather than later and Cam would have gone to the country blaming them for another election and they would have been decimated anyway. IN many respects they are performing (at long last) the role of opposition that the Labour Party seems to have abdicated (but it'll still do for them in end).

Steve

Subject: RE: BS: The truth about Clegg...
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 19 Sep 11 - 07:11 AM

they would have been decimated anyway

"Decimation"? Compared to what they can look forward to now, that would be an incredible electoral triumph for the LibDems.

Subject: RE: BS: The truth about Clegg...
From: ollaimh
Date: 19 Sep 11 - 09:38 AM

i remain unsurprised by macgrath's low blows. however its about time scotland escaped the uk's militarist dungeon and began to reap the benifets of it's oil for itself. what's left of the oil.

they really don't need the old war mongers and would be better off without them.

if that elects tories for ever well maybe english men of the progressive type ought to look in the mirror and start discussing their real history of international violence rather than coddling the mythologists that serve the tory view, you have to start educating people some time. it may take a long time but if it's never done the english will never have a society that is even slightly egalatarian and rascist free.

i still have a head that spins that tony blair joined the iraq war. how does a labour party do that? because they have never faced and discussed the roots of british imperialism and class bigotry--which go hand in hand

Subject: RE: BS: The truth about Clegg...
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 19 Sep 11 - 10:09 AM

Is the Irish-isation of McGrath's name an example of Irish republican colonialism? Or just ineducable spelling?

Subject: RE: BS: The truth about Clegg...
From: Musket
Date: 19 Sep 11 - 01:02 PM

Bridge wrote; "How can people be such venal deluded fools as to kowtow to this corrupt elite?"

Possibly because "people" aren't as wonderfully clever as you? "People" haven't your clever insight into how everything you disagree with is wrong?

Christ on a bike, I have little time for this coalition, but not having Bridge's intellect, I have to lower myself to the level of respecting the wishes of the millions who don't vote for Bridge's utopia.

Subject: RE: BS: The truth about Clegg...
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 19 Sep 11 - 01:09 PM

"Respect"? Why Mither, should you suffer fools gladly? Or is it just "There but for fortune?"

Subject: RE: BS: The truth about Clegg...
From: Musket
Date: 19 Sep 11 - 01:35 PM

So anybody who disagrees with you is a fool?

Should I not respect what I may not personally agree with?

The fortune is there, or varying degree of it. Funnily enough, it was raised by seeing the other person's point, seeing the wishes of others and trying to accommodate them, and sorting out issues before solicitors and barristers get their greedy mitts on business differences.

I do suffer fools gladly anyway. I answer your charges for instance......

Subject: RE: BS: The truth about Clegg...
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 19 Sep 11 - 05:48 PM

Don't mistake me ollaimh - I'd vote for Scottish independence, if I lived in Scotland, and on balance I hope that is how Scots vote when they get the chance. I don't look forward to the effect this is likely to have on Westminster politics, but that's another matter.

I'd hope that perhaps the end of the United Kingdom might throw up another chance for electoral reform for the rump English state.

Subject: RE: BS: The truth about Clegg...
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 19 Sep 11 - 06:35 PM

No Mither - some may have rational arguments. Some however do not and I see no reason to dignify them.

Subject: RE: BS: The truth about Clegg...
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 20 Sep 11 - 03:21 AM

I guess most of us respect peoples right to think and say most things but since most of us having been listening to stuff for a few years now we recognise stuff we have decided is not true sometime ago and generally feel the need to say so.

If you listen to some discussion on TV about some subject you happen to know a lot about - morris dancing, old English Ballads, Sea Shanties, the Labour Party, Green issues - you will find that very few programmes get more than a bit right. And again we geel the need to say that stuff in such programmes are wrong.

I don't think it's arrogance - it's experience

L in C#

Subject: RE: BS: The truth about Clegg...
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 20 Sep 11 - 03:29 AM

On the original post, as if it matters, before the last General Election The Lib Dems seemed to position themselves, in some senses, to the left of the The Labour Party.

After the election they proped up the tories. Never mind if they should - they did and those voters who wanted the Labour Part-lite or some such thing, felt betrayed - and they were.

In Manchester last year 7 Lib Dems stood and all were defeated including their leader and many sitting councillors

L in C#

Subject: RE: BS: The truth about Clegg...
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 20 Sep 11 - 03:56 AM

Much of the stuff that Clegg was spouting at the conference - at least the bits I heard - was simply false. I was particularly taken by his assertion that if you looked at the small print of Labour spending cut plans the bottom line was much the same as the coalition's. Well - first that was not what he was saying before the election. Was he lying then or is he lying now? Second, who bears the pain? We are not "all in it together" - as always, it's teh rich wot gets the pleasure, but the poor wot gets the blame.

Subject: RE: BS: The truth about Clegg...
From: Musket
Date: 20 Sep 11 - 03:57 AM

Bridge wrote

No Mither - some may have rational arguments. Some however do not and I see no reason to dignify them.

You don't have rational arguments and I don't dignify you do I?

I read your words and once I have used a dictionary and thesaurus I generally understand them. I only dignify you in that I hear where you are coming from. For somebody who keeps reminding us you are in the legal world, you have a strange way of respecting your own trade sometimes.

Same with many of those you treat with contempt. I reserve contempt for those who go outside of society's bounds, not for those whose politics I beg to differ with.

Back to Clegg & Co. I reckon Jeremy Paxman is a bully who twists sometimes valid points in order to get ratings and justify his position as a rottweiller. That said...

The way Vince Cable struggled in his interview, the appalling behaviour of the audience in the debate Paxman held with them.. Telling him he was asking the wrong question when they were too ashamed to answer.

We are perhaps a two party state after all, but with the proviso that you don't need to be first past the post any more, and you can stuff a few LibDem Ministers around in order to keep your own loony fringe in its box.

Part of me doesn't like that, and part of me likes keeping radical elements of both real parties in their box. Cleggism - the preserve of harlots throughout the ages or whatever Baldwin said, I'm sure someone will give the correct quote if they can be arsed.

Subject: RE: BS: The truth about Clegg...
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 20 Sep 11 - 03:57 AM

"He's very likely ensured that Scotland will vote for independence"

The Scottish people I'm acquainted with are, to a man, against it. Admittedly that's a small number, but if they are a reasonably representative sample of the Scottish population (and I have no reason to suspect that they are not), the result would be a landslide 'No' vote.

I have to say that I hope I'm wrong, but I do believe in the old saying concerning arithmetic and chickens.

Subject: RE: BS: The truth about Clegg...
From: Musket
Date: 20 Sep 11 - 04:19 AM

I recall chuckling when Dick Gaughan said "If the English want their independence, let them have it."

Back in the real world, whatever makes Scotland think they can survive economically? The only way to get independence is through a SNP government calling the referendum, and the rest of The UK agreeing to losing offshore oil income. The contracts were signed through Westminster legislation and can only be repealed through it.

I am not fussy one way or another to be fair, but Salmond only recently spoke of a Celtic tiger and economical alignment with Ireland and Iceland. He is now crowing about their bucking the trend in employment figures. Fine, and whilst I agree to public investment to pump priming an economy... Scotland's lowering of unemployment is a political rather than an economic factor. Sadly, all it does is increase Scotland's reliance on the public sector for having an economy at all.

Westminster without Scottish Labour MPs? Yeah, you run the risk of an increased Tory vote, but that's democracy for you, a bit of a bugger when your dreams aren't realised.