they will be the king makers if no majority is obtained....
There are a number of scenarios... Not seen the numbers of projected seats recently but my gut instinct is a lib lab pact. This is based on news coverage that the libs are on the floor except where they have an MP and labour gain some seats. The biggest losers are the tories who are essentially dealing with a split which Heath, Thatcher and Major all avoided... Therefore Cameron might well be finished and Johnson takes over. I make this prediction in the knowledge that the campaign is unlikely to clarify more than 20% of the issues and information required to make an informed decision! What happens after the count in terms of horse trading will determine the success or otherwise of the next government... Some of the Tory utterings are surely preparation for 2019?
Was just interested in the totals following my previous post.
But this is not an EU elevtion, it is the General Election so not sure those figures are relevant. Although I think the Greens do better in EU elections as people can see the Greens have more support in other countries, so can band together in a green wedge.
Finally, I think as the polls are suggesting the UKIP percentage will vastly increase this time whereas the Greens will not, then UKIP would 'deserve' (for want of a better word) to be in those debates.
Greens don't get the media coverage because the media and the establishment aren't scared of them and see no need to constantly slag them off. UKIPs popularity proves there is no such thing as bad publicity, only publicity. It also proves the media are collectively too dumb to appreciate that. If the Greens looked like getting populist support they would get coverage. But the Greens are a conviction party not a populist one.
It's going to be fascinating to see how the four parties approach the debates. Farage will obviously go all guns blasting in the only debate he's participating in. And Cameron and Miliband will be forced to attack him, possibly leaving Clegg in the role of "reasonable bloke" in the middle.
Then, in round two, Clegg is forced into centre stage, where he just has to avoid being squeezed out.
And in the last round, the two PMs-elect slug it out.
It's a very odd system. 25% of the participants (Farage) will be debating an election to a parliament in which he doesn't participate. And, in the final round, the Deputy Prime Minister and the leader of one of the two parties in Government isn't allowed to participate. Very odd.
It will be interesting to see how the Scots react to four white, middle class, southern, English men debating about the UK parliament, when they have three women leading the main parties in Scotland.
It's going to be fascinating to see how the four parties approach the debates.
It will be interesting to see how the Scots react to four white, middle class, southern, English men debating about the UK parliament, when they have three women leading the main parties in Scotland.
It's going to be fascinating to see how the four parties approach the debates.
It will be interesting to see how the Scots react to four white, middle class, southern, English men debating about the UK parliament, when they have three women leading the main parties in Scotland.
Aren't the three Scots women also White?
Quite. If someone had said four black men, there would be all sorts of racist claims. Luckily, we're above that.
Let me put it another way then... Scotland is likely to have three female party leaders by the time of the General Election. It must be very frustrating to have no women in the national debates, especially since the Green party has a female leader.
Even the most cursory inspection of the Green Party and their candidates would give you an idea why they're known as the Watermelon Party - green on the outside to trick the crusties but red on the inside as they're just a Labour fringe. At the London mayoral elections the Greens campaigned for both themselves and Ken Livingstone.
I object to the debates in general unless they let every party that polls above 5% participate. Tories, Labour, Lib Dems, UKIP, Greens, SNP & Plaid Cymru should all be allowed as they all stand a serious chance of winning at least a seat. The Commies and Fascists won't and should be rightly excluded from spouting their barmy views on a televised platform. We are slowly but surely moving towards a paradigm where no one party will realistically be able to win a majority - there are now too many choices for those on the left, centre or right for one party to be able to capture a large enough section of the vote.
Indeed, the population is probably sick of one party running riot since the last party to win a workable majority did so much damage to every area of the nation everyone has been put off the 2-party seesaw.
I cannot see FPTP surviving once the smaller parties start winning more seats - it is in the interests of everyone except Labour and the Tories to move towards PR, yet eventually there will be too many seats governed by the other parties combined where they will be able to demand it.
Or do they realise they really are an irrelevance?
Surely that would be spitting faux feathers not real ones?
By the way for those that have never really thought much about the Green Party, the name, of itself, is really just clever marketing - very much like BP's cynical use of the flower logo. The "green" bit is only a small part of what they stand for. A quick read of their last manifesto greenparty.org.uk/assets/files/European%20Manifesto%202014.pdf makes it obvious that they are heavily left wing if not just plain old-fashioned communists. For example they are against the EU's anti-competition laws because it makes it harder to nationalise stuff! They want workers to have the right to buy the company they work for and form co-operatives.
Or do they realise they really are an irrelevance?
Surely that would be spitting faux feathers not real ones?
By the way for those that have never really thought much about the Green Party, the name, of itself, is really just clever marketing - very much like BP's cynical use of the flower logo. The "green" bit is only a small part of what they stand for. A quick read of their last manifesto greenparty.org.uk/assets/files/European%20Manifesto%202014.pdf makes it obvious that they are heavily left wing if not just plain old-fashioned communists. For example they are against the EU's anti-competition laws because it makes it harder to nationalise stuff! They want workers to have the right to buy the company they work for and form co-operatives.
If the company is a Plc then workers do have the right to buy it if they can raise enough money to trigger a takeover.
But yeah, the Greens are less interested in policies regarding the environment and sustainability than they are creating a socialist state to mirror Trotsky's wet dream.
A few things that the public gets wrong. (And I am not claiming I would have guessed any of them more accurately...). These are from recent Ipsos MORI polling.
Teenage pregnancy: on average, we think teenage pregnancy is 25 times higher than official estimates: we think that 15% of girls under 16 get pregnant each year, when official figures suggest it is around 0.6%.
Crime: 58% do not believe that crime is falling, when the Crime Survey for England and Wales shows that incidents of crime were 19% lower in 2012 than in 2006/07 and 53% lower than in 1995[ii]. 51% think violent crime is rising, when it has fallen from almost 2.5 million incidents in 2006/07 to under 2 million in 2012.
Job-seekers allowance: 29% of people think we spend more on JSA than pensions, when in fact we spend 15 times more on pensions (£4.9bn vs £74.2bn).
Benefit fraud: people estimate that 34 times more benefit money is claimed fraudulently than official estimates: the public think that £24 out of every £100 spent on benefits is claimed fraudulently, compared with official estimates of £0.70 per £100.
Foreign aid: 26% of people think foreign aid is one of the top 2-3 items government spends most money on, when it actually made up 1.1% of expenditure (£7.9bn) in the 2011/12 financial year. More people select this as a top item of expenditure than pensions (which cost nearly ten times as much, £74bn) and education in the UK (£51.5bn).
Religion: we greatly overestimate the proportion of the population who are Muslims: on average we say 24%, compared with 5% in England and Wales. And we underestimate the proportion of Christians: we estimate 34% on average, compared with the actual proportion of 59% in England and Wales.
Immigration and ethnicity: the public think that 31% of the population are immigrants, when the official figures are 13%. Even estimates that attempt to account for illegal immigration suggest a figure closer to 15%. There are similar misperceptions on ethnicity: the average estimate is that Black and Asian people make up 30% of the population, when it is actually 11% (or 14% if we include mixed and other non-white ethnic groups)[ix].
Age: we think the population is much older than it actually is – the average estimate is that 36% of the population are 65+, when only 16% are.
Benefit bill: people are most likely to think that capping benefits at £26,000 per household will save most money from a list provided (33% pick this option), over twice the level that select raising the pension age to 66 for both men and women or stopping child benefit when someone in the household earns £50k+. In fact, capping household benefits is estimated to save £290m, compared with £5bn for raising the pension age and £1.7bn for stopping child benefit for wealthier households.
Voting: we underestimate the proportion of people who voted in the last general election – our average guess is 43%, when 65% of the electorate actually did (51% of the whole population).
poll is completely spot on about violent crime. It's fallen rapidly the past 50 years or so. Gets my goat when people say "the world is getting more violent and scary/uncertain". No it isn't. You're just getting it beamed live 24/7 into your tv sets and over the internet now.
A Govt.survey in 2011 found "only 22% of the population (7.5 million adults) are working at Level 2 or above in numeracy – roughly equivalent to A*-C at GCSE – compared with 26% (8.1million adults) in 2003".
My own research suggests that 134% of the UK population don't understand percentages and would therefore have no chance of getting the answers right. :-)
Don't think it's much to do with the internet or TV - people overestmated wildly in the 20s, 30s and 50s. It's just the way humans generalise from individual anecdotes.
The thing is people will vote according to their perception of reality than reality itself. This is what all politicians who seek power quickly realise, so they will usually tell people what they want to hear, especially if those people are disaffected. Try saying to a tradesman 'people were fed up with getting ripped off by local cowboys, and thought they may as well get ripped off by an East European tradesperson who just might be more trustworthy and do a better job, but either way I won't get ripped off as much. It is not in my interests to let local tradespeople continue to rip me off as if it is their birth right'. Those local tradespeople would be all over the UKIP message.
Raising the retirement age which was set in a completely different era with life expectancy of c.72 years has to be one of the fairest and quickest ways to cut government expenditure. But it's not exactly a vote winner whereas blaming "benefit scroungers" and promising to freeze benefits to cut the deficit is ok with Osborne and the tories. As posted on the UKIP thread, a poll today stated voters care about the NHS, jobs/pay and immigration as their top three issues. Labour is well positioned on these issues... Tories not so good. The tories have gone so far as to attack one of the UKs leading sectors by restricting universities in their recruitment of overseas students... Party of free enterprise or narrow self interest?
Comments
The biggest losers are the tories who are essentially dealing with a split which Heath, Thatcher and Major all avoided...
Therefore Cameron might well be finished and Johnson takes over.
I make this prediction in the knowledge that the campaign is unlikely to clarify more than 20% of the issues and information required to make an informed decision!
What happens after the count in terms of horse trading will determine the success or otherwise of the next government... Some of the Tory utterings are surely preparation for 2019?
The greens are a far more established party than Ukip yet get 1/10000000th the coverage.
what percentage did they poll at last elections ?
Yet UKIP have had 5 years worth of 24/7 coverage, the greens barely get a mention.
Then in 2014 they received 8% and 3 EU MPs compared to Lib Dem's 7% and 1 EU MP.
If those two parties deserve a platform, so do the Greens.
Con - 36.40
Lab - 29.00
LD - 23.00
UKIP - 3.10
BNP - 1.90
SNP - 1.70
Green - 1.00
average votes per candidate / (number of candidates)
Con 16,963 (631)
Lab 13,639 (631)
LD 10,833 (631)
SNP 8,328 (59)
BNP 1,669 (338)
UKIP 1,647 (558)
Green 855 (310)
So if we're going by current popularity either it should be Labour, Conservative, UKIP and Greens.
Or Lib Dem, Labour and Conservative if you're judging by 2010.
But this is not an EU elevtion, it is the General Election so not sure those figures are relevant.
Although I think the Greens do better in EU elections as people can see the Greens have more support in other countries, so can band together in a green wedge.
Finally, I think as the polls are suggesting the UKIP percentage will vastly increase this time whereas the Greens will not, then UKIP would 'deserve' (for want of a better word) to be in those debates.
Then, in round two, Clegg is forced into centre stage, where he just has to avoid being squeezed out.
And in the last round, the two PMs-elect slug it out.
It's a very odd system. 25% of the participants (Farage) will be debating an election to a parliament in which he doesn't participate. And, in the final round, the Deputy Prime Minister and the leader of one of the two parties in Government isn't allowed to participate. Very odd.
It will be interesting to see how the Scots react to four white, middle class, southern, English men debating about the UK parliament, when they have three women leading the main parties in Scotland.
Scotland is likely to have three female party leaders by the time of the General Election. It must be very frustrating to have no women in the national debates, especially since the Green party has a female leader.
And I don't like Farage at all - he's just very good at what he does unfortunately.
I take your point but the truth is nobody cares what the Greeens have to say. UKIP on the other hand are at the moment changing british politics.
Apparently the Scots Nats are very opposed to these debates. Seems they think they haven't had enough TV exposure this year!
I object to the debates in general unless they let every party that polls above 5% participate. Tories, Labour, Lib Dems, UKIP, Greens, SNP & Plaid Cymru should all be allowed as they all stand a serious chance of winning at least a seat. The Commies and Fascists won't and should be rightly excluded from spouting their barmy views on a televised platform. We are slowly but surely moving towards a paradigm where no one party will realistically be able to win a majority - there are now too many choices for those on the left, centre or right for one party to be able to capture a large enough section of the vote.
Indeed, the population is probably sick of one party running riot since the last party to win a workable majority did so much damage to every area of the nation everyone has been put off the 2-party seesaw.
I cannot see FPTP surviving once the smaller parties start winning more seats - it is in the interests of everyone except Labour and the Tories to move towards PR, yet eventually there will be too many seats governed by the other parties combined where they will be able to demand it.
By the way for those that have never really thought much about the Green Party, the name, of itself, is really just clever marketing - very much like BP's cynical use of the flower logo.
The "green" bit is only a small part of what they stand for. A quick read of their last manifesto greenparty.org.uk/assets/files/European%20Manifesto%202014.pdf makes it obvious that they are heavily left wing if not just plain old-fashioned communists. For example they are against the EU's anti-competition laws because it makes it harder to nationalise stuff! They want workers to have the right to buy the company they work for and form co-operatives.
But yeah, the Greens are less interested in policies regarding the environment and sustainability than they are creating a socialist state to mirror Trotsky's wet dream.
Teenage pregnancy: on average, we think teenage pregnancy is 25 times higher than official estimates: we think that 15% of girls under 16 get pregnant each year, when official figures suggest it is around 0.6%.
Crime: 58% do not believe that crime is falling, when the Crime Survey for England and Wales shows that incidents of crime were 19% lower in 2012 than in 2006/07 and 53% lower than in 1995[ii]. 51% think violent crime is rising, when it has fallen from almost 2.5 million incidents in 2006/07 to under 2 million in 2012.
Job-seekers allowance: 29% of people think we spend more on JSA than pensions, when in fact we spend 15 times more on pensions (£4.9bn vs £74.2bn).
Benefit fraud: people estimate that 34 times more benefit money is claimed fraudulently than official estimates: the public think that £24 out of every £100 spent on benefits is claimed fraudulently, compared with official estimates of £0.70 per £100.
Foreign aid: 26% of people think foreign aid is one of the top 2-3 items government spends most money on, when it actually made up 1.1% of expenditure (£7.9bn) in the 2011/12 financial year. More people select this as a top item of expenditure than pensions (which cost nearly ten times as much, £74bn) and education in the UK (£51.5bn).
Religion: we greatly overestimate the proportion of the population who are Muslims: on average we say 24%, compared with 5% in England and Wales. And we underestimate the proportion of Christians: we estimate 34% on average, compared with the actual proportion of 59% in England and Wales.
Immigration and ethnicity: the public think that 31% of the population are immigrants, when the official figures are 13%. Even estimates that attempt to account for illegal immigration suggest a figure closer to 15%. There are similar misperceptions on ethnicity: the average estimate is that Black and Asian people make up 30% of the population, when it is actually 11% (or 14% if we include mixed and other non-white ethnic groups)[ix].
Age: we think the population is much older than it actually is – the average estimate is that 36% of the population are 65+, when only 16% are.
Benefit bill: people are most likely to think that capping benefits at £26,000 per household will save most money from a list provided (33% pick this option), over twice the level that select raising the pension age to 66 for both men and women or stopping child benefit when someone in the household earns £50k+. In fact, capping household benefits is estimated to save £290m, compared with £5bn for raising the pension age and £1.7bn for stopping child benefit for wealthier households.
Voting: we underestimate the proportion of people who voted in the last general election – our average guess is 43%, when 65% of the electorate actually did (51% of the whole population).
You what !
They believe 1 in every 6ish girls are pregnant before the age of 16. They must have asked a bunch of ####wits :-)
No wonder we have created a culture, lead by the media of people feeling ashamed when in need of help.
(I don't doubt the survey is true).
My own research suggests that 134% of the UK population don't understand percentages and would therefore have no chance of getting the answers right. :-)
Try saying to a tradesman 'people were fed up with getting ripped off by local cowboys, and thought they may as well get ripped off by an East European tradesperson who just might be more trustworthy and do a better job, but either way I won't get ripped off as much. It is not in my interests to let local tradespeople continue to rip me off as if it is their birth right'.
Those local tradespeople would be all over the UKIP message.
As posted on the UKIP thread, a poll today stated voters care about the NHS, jobs/pay and immigration as their top three issues. Labour is well positioned on these issues... Tories not so good. The tories have gone so far as to attack one of the UKs leading sectors by restricting universities in their recruitment of overseas students... Party of free enterprise or narrow self interest?