trousers

Mike Kane. Labour's Education spokesman. I know politicians of all hues are experts at avoiding the question but that was an absolute masterclass from him. https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=mike%20kane&src=typd

Official announcement: https://southamptonfc.com/news/2017-04-21/announcement-signing-southampton-nathan-tella

Pretty much nail on head IMO. Cheers for posting.

2010: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7165000/conservative-manifesto.html "A Conservative government will act now on debt to get the economy moving. We will deal with the deficit more quickly than Labour, so that mortgage rates stay lower for longer with the Conservatives."

I could be wrong (for a change) but I believe their core aspiration was to reduce the deficit rather than the debt per se. You obviously need to turn the deficit into a surplus before the debt starts coming down from the mega high levels they inherited. Are you suggesting they should have deployed even more "living within our means" measures over the last 7 years than they have done thus far in order to have brought the deficit down at a faster rate? One accepts that they haven't cleared the deficit as quickly as they'd hoped. Maybe they haven't been 'nasty' enough....? or maybe they should have tried squeezing more than c.25% of the country's tax receipts out of c.1% of the richest people in the land...? Edit: just skim read their 2015 manifesto and it did indeed contain the aspiration to 'clear the deficit by the end of the parliament', so there was never a pledge to "cut the UKs debt pile" as such. The debt was always going to grow whilst the deficit still existed (which it could still have done under their manifesto pledge until the last minute of the last hour of the last day of the parliament)

Indeed. Anyway, back to this...

Now there's a cunning plan...

Indeed. Which is why (IMO) the witch hunt against Clegg's tuition fees "u-turn" was illogical. Manifestos are a list of pledges/promises/aspirations that parties say they will put in place if they win the election outright. No one won the 2010 election outright ergo the manifestos ceased to be applicable thereafter (that's simple logic). When a coalition is formed you then come up with a compromise 'manifesto'. I'm not a member of the Nick Clegg fan club but the demonising of him and the lib dems over the tuition fees "promise" says more about the intellect of the demonisers than the supposed demons. In my humble opinion of course

Mods - how do I report this post? I'm fed up (as no doubt you are too) of people accusing certain posters of trolling when we all know there aren't any trolls on this forum. All these so called "trolls" are doing is expressing an opinion without any thinly veiled agendas or desire to wind people up whatsoever. Thanks.

IIRC, the (main) Tory 'excuse' for not being able to fulfil that particular aspiration was because they didn't anticipate the UK's economic performance outstripping most (all?) EU countries, and much of the rest of the world, quite as much as it ended up doing in the 5 years or so after the financial crash of 2008. And, in order to sustain said growth, we needed to supplement the UK workforce with manpower from further afield. That, coupled with the natural tendency for EU citizens in countries whose economies are performing badly to migrate to other EU countries where the economy is more buoyant. In other words, the Tories' argument was that they were a victim of their own success in recovering the economy as well as they did. Obviously their explanation is open to challenge and/or ridicule (as you'll witness on here after me writing this post ), and is no doubt at least partially flawed logic, but all I'm highlighting is they probably didn't wake up one morning after the 2010 election and think: "Ah...I know... let's just ignore our manifesto aspiration and encourage a load of economic migrants to come to the UK just for a laugh"... that's the sort of thing Tony Blair would do...

I'm going to stick my neck out and predict that, contrary to all the polls, the Tories won't win an overall majority... You heard it here first (and probably last)

Are those two stances mutually exclusive though? On one hand there is the goal of ending free movement and on the other hand there is the acknowledgement that such a massive change in policy will obviously have to be transitionary. Was anyone really bereft of the common sense that would have led them to believe otherwise...?

Behave. Blackbridge Cross Borders is a massive worldwide company.... https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09055077/filing-history/MzE2MzY1NTIyMGFkaXF6a2N4/document?format=pdf&download=0

[video=youtube;a4bZQ_6-2Is]

That's an example of part of a national service being provisioned by a third party rather than "privatisation". I understand why the two are often conflated though.

Textbook

http://thesetpieces.com/features/long-road-back-portsmouth/ My favourite piece of selective history recounting in that article: "The most historic announcement of all came on September 29, 2014, when Portsmouth were officially able to declare themselves debt-free after paying back all creditors and ex-players." Let's gloss over the fact that "...paying back..." should actually read "...not paying back 96% of what was owed to..." :mcinness:

I think one thing that recent political history tells us is that predicting certain outcomes is fraught with danger. I'm guessing not many predicted that May would call a snap election today (for example)...

You don't have to be daft to post on here, but it helps...

What odds will I get on the Lib Dems winning the election? And will the odds be as long as they were for Leicester City winning the Prem, the UK leaving the EU or Trump becoming President of the US of A...? Gotta be worth a cheeky fiver, surely? #strangerthingshaveghappened #sortof

Procedurally, do Labour have enough time to have a leadership election before the general election? If they do, wouldn't surprise me if a 'unity candidate' (if such a person exists) hastily forces a leadership election...

Anyone else reckon Liberal Democrat popularity will go through the roof due to hoovering up the 'remain' voters....? Wouldn't surprise me if they push Labour into third place. p.s. Mods - feel free to delete the question marks in the thread title now

Confirmed