saintbletch

I don't understand the significance Nolan, and I guess that was the point I was making. It gets people discussing the fact that Labour is trying to be prudent - even if you might have a different view of what prudent is, we all still end up saying that Labour is demonstrating its determination to be seen as prudent. It's a smart communication device.

As others have said, and for many of the reasons already given, I don't have a massive problem per se with changing this. I do have a problem with the timing, and the apparent inequity of exactly who makes up the "we" in the phrase "we're all in it together". With an as-yet unspecified £12B of cuts still to found come from the welfare bill, and with a budget deficit of ~£90B and a national debt approaching £1.5T, cutting a tax that benefits ~4% of the population (a figure grabbed from Twitter that may or may not be accurate) seems to be at best fiscally imprudent, and at worst plainly unfair. When we're running a budget surplus, or we've got the national debt under control, or at the very least we've significantly reduced our interest payments, then there is a time to discuss something like this. Putting this forward now as cheap political theatre, doesn't suggest the Conservatives are being fiscally prudent.

All I know is that Nolan is a helmet. Anyway, I don't know if I'm in a particularly charitable mood towards Labour, but I'm sensing a turning of the tide in the last several days. I'm not sure that it will make that much of a difference to the result, but the sense I get is that Labour is being perceived more credibly. This is both in terms of leadership and fiscal responsibility. The more the public sees of Milliband, the less negatively he is perceived would be my guess. Given where he was starting from, that isn't too difficult. I do recognise however that this might be confirmation bias, and I expect others to put me right. I should immediately say that I trust none of the suits that want our votes, and that I understand that whatever any of them says right now, it will likely change once they get into power/coalition. So my comments are more about the election strategy, than they are idealogical. I watched Miliband's launch of the Labour manifesto this morning. I actually found myself warm to him - enough to put out of my mind his geekiness, his voice and the fact that as his lips were moving, he was likely lying. The more I see of him outside of PMQs, the more I get a sense that he's got something about him. Given that he isn't really speaking to me, or Tory voters, but rather a small swathe of marginal / floating voters in Scotland as well as down south, I think the tone was about right. Against the context of the Conservative pledge to somehow find the money to meet the £8B/year NHS shortfall, he actually seemed to appear to be credibly talking about fiscal prudence. Putting the potentially inflammatory idealogical content to one side, I felt that the way it was communicated was very well thought through. The idea that he claimed that everything was costed was positive, and contrasts against the conservative tactics of seemingly matching other parties' spending commitments on the promise of a growing economy. The idea of this "Budget Responsibility Lock" is clever as a communication device. If he draws the Tories into talking about this, he will point out that they have no such commitment. It's also something that can be made to appear tangible to voters. A lock, monitored by an 'independent' third party, is a uniquely clever way to address their credibility issues. In questioning him, the press pushed him on the fact that he had not set a timescale for the deficit to be cleared, his response again was 'clever'. He said that putting artificial time limits on these things is counter-productive. He suggested that Osborne had lost a lot of credibility after continuing to fail to meet his targets. From another angle, I could quite easily see that as weak, but with my new-found charity, it seemed smart. Overall, it was pretty low-key, but had the whiff of credibility about it. I guess things could change tomorrow, given a good launch from the Conservatives.

Don't know about the accuracy of these claims. Anyone closer to the NHS/legislation care to comment?

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I'm pretty sure I said the Left, shurlock.

Quite right Lord Duckhunter. That one just popped up on Twitter, but I guess Iannucci's left-leaning bias was always going to surface at some point. Feel free to supply one of your own for balance. Here's another one that just popped up via a social network. Even though I try to read a balanced (Left versus Right) set of views, I seem to get this sort of stuff in my timeline. I think the problem with posting balanced, Left versus Right 'satire', is that the worst that is levelled at the Left is that they generally **** up the economy trying to help the many at the expense of the few, whilst the Right generally ****s up the economy trying to help a few at the expense of the many. It's personal, obviously, but I'd just rather be incompetent than unfair.

Because we can all learn a lot from The Thick Of It, but apropos of nothing in particular...

Like! Coming late to the debate aintforever, but that's an excellent mechanism to highlight two equally legal, but perhaps equally morally questionable life strategies.

Who?

[vine]OEj59nVqwE3[/vine] ...and one for The Goat. (or Llama)

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Samuel L Jackson?

I bet yours is well-thumbed, Lou.

The cat's out of the bag. I'm Lou and she is me. pap agreed to play along and Bucks is another account that pap uses. Don't tell anyone. Fanny in the forum is hardly something new, Bear. TMS has been wall to wall ****s for years. Oh, something nice... Your hair looks less gay today, Bear. Halo, nice use of 'auto'. x

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxQ6L3kN4n8

It was worse under the last Labour government. That said I do find myself agreeing with my Right, honourable colleague. Plus and one.

Alas no Halo, some wag on Twitter did it. I was thinking of starting with 50 Shades', and turning it into a children's book, but Bear's already done that. Word to the wise - if you're going to do the same with your Kindle books, make sure you don't use a permanent marker.

Turning Narnia into porn.