pap

Oh aye, although it's difficult to work out what you mean while you're in Arnie mode. I'm going to assume you're talking about people shouting "pass the lube" instead of "we're being fúcked!".

Three times tuition fee rise. Huge rise in food banks. Poor being turfed out of London. UK wide riots. Millions of hours of free labour being given to corporations. More private industry brought into the NHS. Overtime hours disappearing for part time workers. Huge rise in punitive and exploitative "zero hours" contracts, tailor-made for would-be small scale tyrants. Electoral reform kicked into the long grass. Rise of parties like UKIP, and organisations even further to the right. 20 percent VAT. Poor blamed for everything. No end in sight to the cuts, with more corporate pressies like TTIP on the way, which this government will do f**k all to curtail. The coalition has been a f**king disaster.

Achieve it? This wasn't something they aspired to, aimed for and missed. Nor was it outside their power. Twenty seven of their MPs did something they pledged they wouldn't do. Dress it up in as much contrarian apologism as you like. Thems the facts.

Not an applicable criticism. The Lib Dems weren't pledging to do something outside their power. They were merely going to vote against any rise in tuition fees. Twenty seven of them didn't and will likely pay the price.

Yeah. Doesn't say that on the signs. If anything, the language makes it sound as if they have no expectations of being in government.

Because it's a double win for those that get gainfully employed. It's worth investing money in working class kids if it means they become net contributors. No brainer, really.

They could have dug their heels in on any issue. Isn't that the "problem" with coalition government?

Also known as grounding your bombers. I'm sure the scholarships cover some poor kids, but your policy would bar working class students from getting into elite institutions. But hey, let's have those f**kers earning non-graduate money or keep them out of the top graduate jobs. There are plenty of jobs, no competition for unskilled work and it'll all be tickety-boo.

They did no such thing. They are called tuition fees and they tripled. The language on their pledge is unambiguous. They're a pack of opportunist (lap|rob)dogs that I'll enjoy seeing get eviscerated in May.

I pledge to vote against any increase in fees in the next Parliament and to pressure the government to introduce a fairer alternative. Those words in full. Fees tripled. 27 liars right here:- Danny Alexander (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) Norman Baker (Lewes) Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) Gordon Birtwistle (Burnley) Tom Brake (Carshalton & Wallington) Jeremy Browne (Taunton Deane) Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) Paul Burstow (Sutton & Cheam) Vincent Cable (Twickenham) Alistair Carmichael (Orkney & Shetland) Nick Clegg (Sheffield Hallam) Edward Davey (Kingston & Surbiton) Lynne Featherstone (Hornsey & Wood Green) Don Foster (Bath) Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) Duncan Hames (Chippenham) Nick Harvey (Devon North) David Heath (Somerton & Frome) John Hemming (Birmingham Yardley) Norman Lamb (Norfolk North) David Laws (Yeovil) Michael Moore (Berwickshire, Roxburgh & Selkirk) Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) Jo Swinson (Dunbartonshire East) Sarah Teather (Brent Central) David Ward (Bradford East) Steve Webb (Thornbury and Yate)

People are angry with the Lib Dems over tuition fees for three reasons. 1) They lied at the time. 2) They lied again, when they tried to make out they only meant it in the event of a majority government 3) It's more universal than people think, píssing off existing students and parents with aspirations for their kids. Mostly though, it's the lies and the fact that people remember stuff.

Fair enough, but I think "evil f**king poodle" and "Bliar" are entirely fair game. One million people dead on his say so. Fair enough, I'm sure that the US would have got some other soft f**ker to say yes. It really didn't need to be us.

Ha. I get to strongly disagree with Lou about something. He was an evil f**king poodle that cosied up to the closest thing the US have ever got to fascists. His unconditional support for the war plans of the neoconservatives, including lying to his own Parliament and people, enabled the death of over a million human beings. His legacy is a Middle Eastern region racked with sectarianism, suicide bombings and a ready supply of legitimate extremists for the foreseeable future, on account of their relatives being blown up for US/UK imperialist interests. Discuss.

I'd say that was more about rejecting someone so closely tied with the previous era. David was very much the bloke much of the Parliamentary party wanted, but the unions had other ideas.

Well, the popular theory, advanced by a few on here, is that it isn't a good time to be in government. The Conservatives don't really give a toss about whether they are "liked" or not; they know they've got certain sections of the electorate locked up, or at least not voting Labour. I do know that Tony Blair is one of the most divisive figures ever to be associated with the party. He won't help.

It really isn't that different, but the other things you mention are still seen in their proper context. As much as I'd love to say that the Bullingdon club photos are a big factor in who Cameron is now, I'm in my forties now and recognise that people change hugely. There are people from my own life that wouldn't have got or given me the time of day at that age. The Miliband saga was just f**king grubby, and to an extent, it all is. The typical cut-off point is simply "life before politics". We've seen it done, but pre-politics witch-hunts aren't something we do that much, or care about. No-one really gives a toss about Gideon's allegedly drug and hooker replete life, but people do give a shít if their Chancellor looks off his tits in the Commons.

Not even trying to win, are they?

I see Blair is saying things again today. FFS, Labour. Shut him up unless you can get him to the right fking venue.

One theory is that Ludwig isn't a real boy, and is a mere sock account for a regular poster that fancies having a pop without the comeback. There is some photographic evidence supporting this theory.

More about attitudes really. I've never really had the luxury of being a racist, but you'd definitely have heard a load of homophobic terms being bunged about in our 17 year old set. Wouldn't want to be judged today on things I'd said then. It kind of is. Prosecute the slimy bugger on anything he's done as an adult, especially those awkward moments when he's been filmed privately countenancing things he'd never say in public. There's plenty of it. I just find the idea of people going that far back distasteful, irrelevant and gratuitous. He's technically a minor at that point. What next? Baby Nige once smeared his own shít in something that resembled a swastika? The bastard! Uncredited and unsourced, as usual

I'm not a UKIP voter, but this shít is grasping. Are you comfortable with your record as a seventeen year old? I certainly wouldn't want to be judged on mine.

The only way that word, or any word, offends you is if you let it. There's a separate debate to be had about whether a debate where the label "mong" is bunged about is really a debate, but in general, getting upset about this sort of stuff is a failure in your own filters. And yes, I've read angelman's account and I thank him for sharing a perspective, but equally, I have never got the sense that Turkish was trying to equate the word with people with Down's Syndrome. It's all about context; part of it is Turkish constantly trying to re-pitch SaintsWeb as something as less serious than it is by continually labelling the entire enterprise a "mongboard", probably brought on by nerds like meself infesting the place with our polysyllables and suchlike. The irony now is that he would like us to treat this topic seriously, despite it all being a mongboard and not a very serious place. Same deal on the ol' racism threads that frequently pop up. Treat it seriously! Please! The overall context is a dog chasing its tail. Yap yap. Mongboard. Yap yap. My freedom of speech is being curtailed. Yap yap. Mongboard. How can anyone possibly be offended by that?

Verbal creating bizarre strawman universes where no-one can get a racial insult on the mark and yet, inexplicably, demanding answers to his questions. Lovely stuff.

Thing is, without anyone pushing for reform, where is it going to come from? What sets the process of democratic reform off? Labour aren't even offering a referendum, so no real pressure from them. Cameron gets laughed off the continent every time he tries broaching the issue. The Lib Dems, once cast-iron guarantors of an in/out referendum, are now "the party of in". The Greens are offering a referendum, but how would an EU watcher break down the composition of those voting Green? I'm in agreement with your point that Brits can be myopic and insular, but in their defence, the EU has never been sold straight to the European public. The only thing the British public ever signed up to was involvement in an economic treaty. We're way past that now. The EU is in effect, a federal state without a democratically elected executive, and it probably rather likes it that way. What will any British party be able to do to get it to reform itself?

Repeatedly, my good man. The missus did me the honour of washing a passport for me, and I waylaid its replacement, so I've had to apply for ESTAs a few times in the past two years. If people were barred from being in the US on the basis of being critical to its pronouncements, they'd have to kick half the present US citizens out right now. And the other half when a Republican President is elected.